Artificial tactile sensing approach in aortic-repair-laparoscopy: aorta cross clamping during surgery

Abstract

Abdominal aortic aneurysm is one of the most common diseases of the vascular system for which the most definitive treatment is surgery. Laparoscopy is a primary method of minimally invasive surgery that could be useful in aortic repair surgeries. Although this method of surgery has significant advantages, the difficulty of exactly distinguishing the aorta from its surrounding tissues is its main drawback; this can cause many problems during the aorta cross clamping process. One of the most important limitations is that it is a time-consuming process; aorta cross clamping leads to increases in surgery duration. Artificial tactile sensing is an innovative technology aiming to make tactile data more available for surgeons, especially in situations where developments in technology make the surgeons less efficient. In this paper, considering the present problems during aortic repair laparoscopy, applicability of a novel tactile robotic system capable of cross clamping an artery during laparoscopy was evaluated. Having considered a small, 5-degree-of-planar-freedom robot and imitated surgeon’s palpation using software, the path followed by the tip of the new tactile robotic system was extracted. It is shown that this new tactile robotic system is well capable of dissecting an artery from its adjacent tissues in a short time with an acceptable accuracy. The functional principles of the tactile robotic system capable of cross clamping the aorta during laparoscopy will also be presented.

Keywords::

• Abdominal aortic aneurysm
• Minimally invasive surgery
• Artificial tactile sensing

Acknowledgements

The authors would express their gratitude to the Artificial Tactile Sensing and Robotic Surgery Laboratory of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering of Amirkabir University of Technology for their help on preparation of this paper.

Declaration of interest: The authors would like to state that there are no conflicts of interest. This work was granted by Surgery and Trauma Research Center based in Sina Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences by the grant numbered 95.