Tactile Sensors for Clinical Applications

Abstract

The Tactile Imaging Probe (TIP) is developed for breast cancer screening in remote regions, which can complement the current subjective method of clinical breast examination. The newly developed Graphical User Interface for TIP guides image acquisition and displays results from tumor size and stiffness calculations, as well as TIP Score, in near real-time. Smartphone-based Compression Induced Sensing (SCIS) System is the smartphone-based version of TIP. SCIS is developed to characterize the tissue’s mechanical properties using a smartphone camera and its communication system together with the tactile sensor. SCIS has two acquisition modes: direct and indirect. The direct acquisition mode, SCIS – D, reads the compression pattern from the probe caused by its direct compression against the tissue. SCIS – D is currently used for clinical data acquisitions in breast cancer application. On the other hand, SCIS - I, reads the tissue recovery pattern from the compression against a tissue. SCIS – I designed to measure the elasticity of tissue in body fluid volume measurement application.