Inclusion detection with robotic palpation and mechanical property characterization for prostate abnormal tissue detection

Abstract

Palpation is one of the medical examination procedures using a tactile sensation of the physicians. This procedure is not only relatively safe, fast, intuitive, and less labor intensive, but also capable of providing valuable information of status of tissues including stiffness, viscosity, and existence of abnormalities. Palpation has been widely used in many medical fields including urology and gynecology. One of the most important facets in these fields is the early and accurate diagnosis of diseases, but the information obtained by the palpation is subjective and dependent on the experience of physicians, and is not quantitative. Therefore, this research addresses some of the main bottlenecks to address the limitations. First, robotic palpation based inclusion detection will be suggested and validated by using the tissue phantom experiments and mechanical property characterization. Second, mechanical property maps, that show the mechanical properties of normal and cancer prostate tissues, will be proposed, which are estimated using the results measured by robotic palpation experiments and mechanical property characterization. Finally, a robotic palpation system will be developed to detect the prostate abnormal tissue. Using the system, we will verify the possibility of proposed methods from the tissue phantom experiments and clinical experiments. Therefore, we applied the proposed protocol and system for abnormal tissue detection and localization using the different mechanical properties of tissues.