Force modeling of tool-tissue interaction force during suturing

Abstract

A proper mechanical characterization of soft biological tissue has a great significance in the medical application, such as virtual reality simulators, surgery preoperative planning and the design of force feedback system for master-slave medical robot. To study the mechanical properties of soft tissue in suture operation, this paper divided the suture into three phases on basis of suture operation process, and conducted experiments to investigate the tool-tissue interactive forces, where the parameters related to suturing operation were considered in experiments design to guarantee the reliability of the experiment, and the force model of each phases was established according to the experimental statistical data. And verification experiments were conducted to evaluate the models by comparing the forces obtained by models with those by sensor. The results showed that the built force model agreed with the experimental data well. The proposed force models can be used to reflect the force variation during suture.