Abstract
This study presents a platform for ex-vivo detection of cancer nodules, addressing automation of medical diagnoses in surgery and associated histological analyses. The proposed approach takes advantage of the property of cancer to alter the mechanical and acoustical properties of tissues, because of changes in stiffness and density. A force sensor and an ultrasound probe were combined to detect such alterations during force-regulated indentations. To explore the specimens, regardless of their orientation and shape, a scanned area of the test sample was defined using shape recognition applying optical background subtraction to the images captured by a camera. The motorized platform was validated using seven phantom tissues, simulating the mechanical and acoustical properties of ex-vivo diseased tissues, including stiffer nodules that can be encountered in pathological conditions during histological analyses. Results demonstrated the platform’s ability to automatically explore and identify the inclusions in the phantom. Overall, the system was able to correctly identify up to 90.3% of the inclusions by means of stiffness in combination with ultrasound measurements, paving pathways towards robotic palpation during intraoperative examinations.
Highlights
Cancer is an abnormal and uncontrolled cell growth that invades healthy tissues, and that can spread via metastases to other locations in the body [1]
All the experimental results presented have been repeated over seven replicas of the developed phantoms
In this work we present a platform aiming at identifying cancer nodules in ex-vivo tissues
Summary
Cancer is an abnormal and uncontrolled cell growth that invades healthy tissues, and that can spread via metastases to other locations in the body [1]. Accurate localization of tumors in tissues resected during surgery can allow the surgeon to decide and modify in itinere the planned intervention so to remove malignant tissues missed in pre-operative imaging. Stiffness of human tissue is higher for tumor nodules with respect to healthy tissues [5,6,7,8,9,10]. Intraoperative palpations of the resected malignant tissue provide essential information about the presence of abnormalities [11]. Such investigation is part of the general practice performed by a specialist through manual palpation to retrieve several information about cancer nodules [12]. Ultrasound analysis [16] can complement stiffness data because of the different acoustic properties of cancer nodules, as demonstrated by intraoperative ultrasonography recordings having reported influence (varying from 2.7% up to 73%) on the surgical procedures that were preoperatively planned [17,18,19,20]
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