A system of sensors and haptic interfaces will be able to provide robot surgeons with a “sense of touch”, thus opening up new perspectives in operations that are already conducted using robotic systems, and which have a great impact on women’s health: myomas, very common and associated with infertility, miscarriages and pregnancy complications, and uterine prolapse, which is highly prevalent in women over 60.
The system was designed by the robotics team of the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa (DII) thanks to the collaboration with doctors from the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine of the University of Pisa as part of the ART project (Advancing Robotic gynecologic surgery through artificial Touch).
“The operations conducted in robotic surgery - explains Matteo Bianchi, professor of Robotics at the Department of Information Engineering and at the “E. Piaggio", and coordinator of the ART project - allow the doctor not only to minimize the impact of the surgical procedure, but also to perform an operation on a patient who is not physically in the same place. In gynecological surgery, and in particular in the treatment of uterine fibromatosis and pelvic organ prolapse, the effectiveness of operations in robotic surgery and telesurgery is contrasted by the absence of tactile information, which makes it very difficult to locate the myomas and identify the anatomical structures".
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Our system aims to collect through sensors the tactile information that the surgeon would have by touching the tissues with his own hands, and reproduce it through wearable haptic interfaces, which will return to the doctor the information on the mechanical properties of the tissues, such as the stiffness and shape of the anatomical structures. The development of new haptic interfaces will also significantly advance the surgical training of young doctors".
The robotic system will also be equipped with a certain degree of autonomy: by autonomously evaluating the mechanical properties of the tissues, the robot will make an optimal estimate of the location of the points of interest, and will return this information to the doctor in the form of a tactile impulse.
The project therefore aims to contribute significantly to the sustainable development objectives that concern the promotion of quality of life, both by ensuring interventions to protect pregnancy and reproductive health and by promoting a healthy lifestyle and well-being at all ages.
From left Matteo Bianchi, professor of robotics at DII, Giulia Pagnanelli and Paolo Bonifati, PhD students at DII
The research into the applications of haptic interfaces developed by the DII engineering group for the return of tactile information has also opened up interesting scenarios in the field of augmented tactile reality for the hands, through the development of one of the first wearable systems that allow "Feel-through". As already happens in vision, where virtual images are superimposed on the real scene, the wearable device developed at the University of Pisa allows to manipulate the tactile perception of touched objects, altering for example the perceived softness. These solutions could find fertile applications in the training of surgeons in gynecology and beyond. The study was published in the journal Transactions on Haptics, one of the most prestigious in the sector.
“Up until now, augmented reality has exclusively concerned the creation of visual content - explains Giulia Pagnanelli, PhD student in Information Engineering at the DII and co-author of the study - Our group is one of the very few to also deal with the creation of an augmented reality for hands, generated by wearable devices, which are the equivalent of viewers for the eyes. We have demonstrated that the perception of the softness of a real object can be modulated. This manipulation of the tactile perception of real objects can offer interesting ideas for the training of surgeons, for example to increase physical-artificial reproductions of anatomical parts and augment them with tactile effects and properties to increase realism and therefore improve the conveyance of clinical-procedural information during training".
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