Novel medical wired palpation device: A validation study of material properties

The lack of haptic feedback during Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) can be potentially dangerous, and has been a factor in preventing a wider application of MIS. A Wired Palpation Device (WPD), which is designed to provide the surgeon with soft tissue viscoelasticity information during MIS, can be an appealing solution to this challenge. As a novel device, the validation of its functionality is critical before being put into actual usage. In this paper, a procedure assessing the effectiveness of the WPD in characterizing soft tissue material properties was introduced. Strain creep indentation tests were performed using the WPD method on four different synthetic tissue samples, followed by standard stress relaxation indentation tests on the same samples. The results showed that the WPD was reliable in characterizing the long-term material response when compared to the traditional method (an average of 5.21% difference), but may still need improvement in its capability of capturing short-term transient soft tissue response.