A Physical Soft Tissue Growth Simulator for Implantable Robotic Devices

In the development of surgical technologies, one of the challenges in their initial validation has been the creation of accurate bench-top tissue phantoms. Tissue phantoms made of elastomeric material have fixed mechanical properties and are not able to increase in size, so they cannot mimic growth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 553 - 556
Main Authors Pontin, Marco, Damian, Dana D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Piscataway IEEE 01.11.2020
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Actuation
Biological properties
Biological system modeling
Biological tissues
Computational modeling
Elastomers
Experimentation
Fibrosis
Force
Implants
In vivo methods and tests
Internal robots
Mechanical properties
physical soft tissue simulator
Real time
Reproduction (biology)
robotic implant
Robots
Scars
Simulation
Soft tissues
Surgical implants
tissue growth simulator
Transplants & implants
Viscoelasticity
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Summary:In the development of surgical technologies, one of the challenges in their initial validation has been the creation of accurate bench-top tissue phantoms. Tissue phantoms made of elastomeric material have fixed mechanical properties and are not able to increase in size, so they cannot mimic growth process or change in mechanical properties of their real counterparts. In this work we present a novel real-time soft tissue simulator aimed at testing the in vivo dynamic behavior of robotic implants. The simulator is capable of reproducing mechanical properties of the biological tissue, e.g., viscoelasticity, as well as its metabolism, being able to grow up to 260 mm. A control strategy based on impedance control enables the simulation of changing mechanical properties in real-time, in order to recreate conditions such as fibrosis or tissue scarring. We finally show the platform in use with a soft implant. The electric actuation in conjunction with the 500 Hz control loop frequency guarantees fast and accurate response. We believe our platform has the potential to reduce the need for in vivo preclinical studies and shorten the path to clinical experimentation.
ISSN:2576-3202
2576-3202
DOI:10.1109/TMRB.2020.3028739