Enabling Minimal Invasive Palpation in Flexible Robotic Endoscopes

In open surgery, palpation allows surgeons to haptically examine the patient’s tissue with their fingers. Hereby, palpation relates the pose of the surgeon’s finger inside the wound and the finger’s indentation into the tissue to the experienced forces in all directions. In this way, the surgeon is able to experience differences in tissue stiffness. Despite being a well-recognized standard procedure in open surgery, palpation has so far been unavailable for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). Thus, surgeons can only rely on endoscope vision. To overcome this drawback, we aim to restore haptic feedback and thus palpation in MIS.