A brief review of miniature flexible and soft tactile sensors for interventional catheter applications

Abstract

Interventional surgery has the advantages of small skin incisions, minimal blood loss, low postoperative infection and short recovery times, and thus has gradually become the preferred surgical approach over traditional open surgeries. Even though significant achievements have been made towards clinical applications, limitations still exist, among which the loss of the natural tactile perception of surgeons due to their indirect touch along the long catheter to the intervening human tissue is the crucial one. In recent years, researchers have dedicated great efforts to the development of advanced medical catheters with smart tactile perception ability, with considerable progress having been made. In this regard, we review the most recent developments of state-of-the-art miniature flexible and soft tactile sensors that are able to be integrated in the tip or on the side wall of medical catheters. We particularly focus on the sensing mechanisms, design requirements, device configuration and sensing performance of different types of sensors, as well as their application demonstration in synthetic anatomical models and in vivo animal experiments. After reviewing the representative research work, the challenges that still exist are summarized and the prospects toward future development are proposed.