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Commercially, numerous physical palpation simulators are available for clinical training purposes mainly for abdominal assessment and breast examination model. The tactile visual images are used to produce pseudo haptics with the existing technology. This conventional method of early diagnosis procedure can be enhanced, and physical visit of a patient can be minimized if a tactile display device can recreate the lump of a patient enabling remote palpation.Īs reported in the tactile display literature, currently there are several devices that attempt to emulate touch feedback utilizing haptics, tactile, or imaging. As a fundamental and preliminary step of diagnostics, the physician would palpate the region of interest to identify the abnormalities of the lump. Conventionally, once a patient senses an abnormality or lump underneath their skin, the patient would need to visit a physician to identify it. Differences in size and stiffness of a tumor may provide information about the early initiation of the disease or its severity, and a physician’s expertise is critical to distinguish the severity of the tumor. Malignant tumors are relatively stiffer than normal tissues located inside a compliant tissue as a rigid mass.
#Apex innovations hemisphere skin
Palpation is one of the fundamental steps used by physicians for routine examinations or early diagnosis of diseases such as physical inspection to detect possibly malignant tumors that can be developed underneath the skin by feeling the abnormality and assessing how stiff it is. The earlier it is diagnosed, the better the likelihood of survival of a cancer patient. Early diagnosis plays a very important role in prevention and consequently reduction of cancer death rates. Globally, one of the leading causes of death is cancer, and it is estimated that by 2030, the number of new cancer cases will rise up to 23.6 million per year. Similarly, the display shape of the nodule can be maintained with minimal or no deformation if the nodule top hemisphere thickness is optimally higher than bottom hemisphere thickness. The higher the thickness of the top hemisphere and the lower the thickness of the bottom hemisphere, the greater the stiffness the nodule can achieve. Results and Conclusions: Experimental results showed that nodule top and bottom wall thickness had a significant effect on the stiffness and deformation of the nodule. Experiments were performed on nodule prototypes of varying wall thicknesses in order to evaluate its effect on stiffness and deformation. Methods: This paper evaluates the manufacturing approach of the nodule, exploring several iterations of the nodule prototype. To further explore this area, we developed a novel palpation device consisting of a uniquely designed nodule mechanism (based on optimizing nodule top and bottom hemisphere wall thickness and manipulating granular jamming method) that can vary stiffness while maintaining the shape of the same nodule display, for which current devices are not capable of in terms of aping a tumor. Background: Lack of feasible palpation display for primary diagnosis of a tumor without any need of physician to patient physical contact has been reported as one of the major concerns.
