UTRGV / COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
AND COMPUTER SCIENCE / MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
|
SDI Students (L-R) |
Elizabeth Gamez, Kai Jandusay, Ramon Hernandez , Cesar Montalvo |
|
Faculty Advisor (s) |
Dr. Victoria Padilla,
Dr. Karen Lozano, Dr. Vasquez |
|
Course Instructors |
Dr. Noe Vargas
Hernandez, Mr. Greg Potter |
INDEX
WHAT IS
THE PROBLEM WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE?
WHY IS
THIS PROBLEM IMPORTANT?
IN CONCLUSION
LEARN
MORE ABOUT OUR DESIGN PROCESS
WELCOME!
Welcome! We are Team #4 “OperationX”,
Elizabeth Gamez, Kai, Ramon and Cesar worked on this
project during the Spring and Fall of 2024. Our project is titled “Design of a
Sensor Based Surgical Simulator.” The problem we tackled was creating a
responsive surgical simulator related to kidney surgery that is more economically
friendly and available to under sourced hospitals and medical schools. We hope
you find this project as captivating as we did. Click on the Welcome Video
below!
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM
WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE?
Currently there is a small
market in creating responsive surgical simulators. Creating an easily
manufacturable product that is responsive and accessible to a larger scale of
hospitals and medical programs would be beneficial in the teaching a variety of
procedures in a safer and stress-free environment developing better competency
for the student. Furthermore, creating a surgery simulator that gives automatic
feedback allows the students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses,
allowing them to know where their areas of improvement lie.
This project's goal is to
create a cost effective and innovative form of practice and training for
surgeries that require increasingly precise incision points such as
percutaneous nephrolithotomy which is a common procedure done around the world.
We are creating a product that can be accessible in more under-sourced
communities, school programs and hospitals to teach the next generation of
surgeons.
IMPORTANT TO KNOW
To better understand the
problem, we conducted background research on relevant topics for this project.
From this we learned the following:
WHY IS THIS PROBLEM
IMPORTANT?
Pre-operative surgical simulations are a very high value
asset allowing surgeons and residents to practice and improve their surgical
skills, reduce surgical time and lower surgical
complications. While using cadavers for training surgical residents is one of
the most common practical instruments for training it is both expensive and
there is a limited supply. By giving surgical residents feedback on their
individual strengths and weaknesses we can further develop their growth and
confidence in these complicated operations.
OUR PROPOSED
SOLUTION
“We hope that through this
project we can impact the current surgical training practice curriculums in a
wider range of schools and hospitals. We want to create a product that is both
innovative and more accessible to under-sourced communities.”
FROM IDEA TO
REALITY
PROTOTYPE EARLY AND
OFTEN
Office Depot prototype:
https://youtube.com/shorts/q85Mw3OYAvo?feature=share
https://youtube.com/shorts/cg6Fko2uqdY?feature=share
Demo Prototype:
https://youtube.com/shorts/vfRw_D1WMnk?feature=share
Demo Senior Design 1 Prototype:
FINAL PRODUCT
FUTURE WORK
For our future work, the
team plans to design a tool to be used with the simulator to help measure the
amount force exerted by the resident/medical student when interacting with the
simulator. The tool in question will be made using a miniature in-line load
cell to measure the normal force that will act upon the tool, whether it be a
scalpel or nephoscope, when it enters the kidney.
To meet one of the design specifications, the
tool will be designed so that multiple attachment/tools can be screwed on to
the load cell. The in-line load cell has threads on both sides of the cell that
can be used to attach the various tools that the team will design during the
summer. The team will also be working on making a skin-like sensor that will be
implemented into the kidney to act as a force sensor and to aid in the design
of a pressure map so that the resident/medical student can see how much force
they are using to enter an area inside the kidney and where in the kidney they
are putting that force. The skin-like sensor will be made using two types of
silicone, a soft top layer and a firm bottom layer.
In between the two layers of silicone will be
the sensing electrodes. The sensor works like a capacitive sensor, meaning that
it will produce an electric field that when a finger or tool approaches the
sensor there will be a disturbance in the magnetic field, leading to a decrease
in the capacitance. From the equation that describes capacitance:
the permittivity of the material (ε) and the area of
the material (A) remain constant, while the distance (d) is the only variable
that changes. By relating the change in distance when the tool makes contact on
the sensor to the force applied, the sensor can be calibrated by subjecting it
to different loadings and recording the distance to make sure the readings are
accurate.
Further
testing on the material will be needed to produce the stiffness required to
match that of organic tissue or close to it as possible. Characterization
techniques that will need to utilize in our analysis
would be compression for calculating the stress that can be imposed on the
samples. Indentation to obtain the mechanical properties of the sample by using
the displacement formed from the indenter to record the force displacement
curves formed during testing. This could also test our pressure mapping
graphical user interface to ensure we are getting accurate readings.
Indentation is often used as an alternative for compression and tensile testing
tissue-like materials. Testing the materials with thermogravimetric analysis
would be beneficial to test the thermal stability of the materials. In order to
conduct further thermal analysis using differential scanning calorimetry would
be best with determining the changes on the material with respect to
temperature and time. This will allow for us to
determine the materials crystallinity and glass transition temperatures.
IN CONCLUSION
Throughout the project’s
development, the team gained invaluable insights into the design of the
sensor-based surgical simulator. After going through many prototypes, we
learned about the different types of materials and sensors that would be best
used to complete the objective of the project. From hydrogel to silicone and
open circuit sensor to capacitive sensors, the team used the combination of
materials and sensors to effectively design and build the simulator prototype.
REFRENCES
M. Teyssier,
B. Parilusyan, A. Roudaut
and J. Steimle, "Human-Like Artificial Skin Sensor for Physical
Human-Robot Interaction," 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics
and Automation (ICRA), Xi'an, China, 2021, pp. 3626-3633, doi:
10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561152. keywords: {Mechanical sensors;Human-robot interaction;Tactile
sensors;Collaboration;Capacitance;Skin;Robustness},
LEARN MORE ABOUT
OUR DESIGN PROCESS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Team OperationX
would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those who contributed to the
completion of this project. Special thanks to our advisors Dr. Padilla, Dr.
Vasquez, Dr. Lozano whose invaluable guidance and expertise were instrumental
in shaping the direction of this work. We are also grateful to the teaching
crew Dr. Vargas and Mr. Potter for their assistance in helping us accomplish a
substantial amount this semester, having successfully undertaken numerous tasks
and initiatives.