Project seeks to return sense of tactile feedback to surgeons

While these techniques have allowed surgeons to operate through small incisions, thereby reducing complications and improving recovery, they also relinquish a sense of feel for the surgeon.

This is particularly important for cancer surgeons who like to feel the tissue they are cutting out — an important means of double-checking where the tumour is and if it is malignant or benign.

‘With keyhole surgery there is still a level of force perception but it’s diminished quite greatly,’ said James Chandler, one of two mechanical engineering students at Leeds University working on the project.

’So the surgeon will work around a fulcrum point that reverses the hand motions and all they can feel is reaction forces that are scaled depending on how far into the patient the tools are — but with robotic surgery it’s completely gone as there’s no direct contact.’

The project began with a comprehensive data-gathering phase on what the actual reactive forces involved in surgery were. This involved using blocks of silicon to simulate various tissues and an automated tri-axial robotic probe with a force sensor. They also embedded hard ball-bearings within the artificial tissue as a proxy for tumours, to see how this affected force responses.