Smart sensing of tool/tissue interaction by resistive coupling

A smart sensing of tool-tissue interaction is required to monitor the surgical task without disturbing the tool manipulation. We proposed a new tactile sensing method that enables us to detect the tool-tissue interaction with a simple hardware by resistive coupling. The system consists of two electrodes, a bridge circuit and a differential amplifier for the robust sensing of the contact resistance between the tool and tissue. In order to evaluate the sensing method, we investigated the relationship between the sensor output and the deformation of a wet sponge sample by retraction task. According to the model fitting of the deformation-output profile, we concluded that the proposed sensor provide enough reproducibility in the simple situation. Furthermore, we confirmed that the developed sensor works with a biological sample.