Force-Based Viscosity and Elasticity Measurements for Material Biomechanical Characterisation with a Collaborative Robotic Arm

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a robotic system capable of accurately measuring tissue viscoelastic properties, which could enhance diagnostic procedures like palpation and ultrasound scans by reducing subjectivity and improving precision.

Contribution

It introduces a method for a collaborative robotic arm to estimate tissue biomechanical parameters with high accuracy, validated against high-precision ground truth measurements.

Findings

Robotic measurements closely match ground truth data.

The system effectively estimates viscoelastic properties of biological tissues.

Potential for clinical application in diagnostic procedures.

Abstract

Diagnostic activities, such as ultrasound scans and palpation, are relatively low-cost. They play a crucial role in the early detection of health problems and in assessing their progression. However, they are also error-prone activities, which require highly skilled medical staff. The use of robotic solutions can be key to decreasing the inherent subjectivity of the results and reducing the waiting list. For a robot to perform palpation or ultrasound scans, it must effectively manage physical interactions with the human body, which greatly benefits from precise estimation of the patient's tissue biomechanical properties. This paper assesses the accuracy and precision of a robotic system in estimating the viscoelastic parameters of various materials, including some tests on ex vivo tissues as a preliminary proof-of-concept demonstration of the method's applicability to biological samples. The measurements are compared against a ground truth derived from silicone specimens with different viscoelastic properties, characterised using a high-precision instrument. Experimental results show that the robotic system's accuracy closely matches the ground truth, increasing confidence in the potential use of robots for such clinical applications.