Development of a tactile robot for tumor detection and localization in biological liver tissue

Abstract

In this paper we developed an automatic examiner robot for improving the process of cancer detection and tumor localization. Variation of mechanical stress on the surface of the tissue was selected as the indicative factor of tumor existence. The experimental examinations were performed on a lamb liver. A compression test was used to extract viscoelastic properties of tissue. Viscoelastic coefficients were used in finite element modeling and capability of robotic-assisted tumor detection was validated. Finally to localize the tumor embedded in the tissue, two sinusoidal and step paths were generated which was followed by the robot. The mean errors of path following of the automatic examiner robot for sinusoidal and step paths were 3.26% and 0.76% respectively which shows high accuracy and reliability of the Cartesian mechanism in soft tissue scanning.