Smart Design of Surgical Suture Attachment Force Measurement Setup Using Tactile Sensor

Abstract

This article presents a novel, low-cost, and smart design setup (plug and play) to measure the needle attachment force of surgical suture in order to check attachment quality and verify the surgical suture manufacturing standards. The proposed design uses a needle gripper, tactile sensor, suture gripper (connected via motorized lead screw), and infrared (IR) sensor, which is mounted over a linear guide. The ends of surgical suture (comprising of needle and thread) are attached between needle gripper and suture gripper, respectively. The motorized suture gripper creates stress on the attachment point of needle and thread of surgical suture, whose force is measured by a tactile sensor followed by the application of Kalman filtering for precise estimation and (then) calibration. An IR sensor is used to track the suture gripper position to stay within the displacement limits and to obtain the characteristic force–position profile as well. In addition, the two interactive graphical interfaces (an OLED and LABVIEW-based installed on windows) are embedded on the device to feature a user-friendly interface. Moreover, for quick documentation and record, the thermal printer is installed inside the setup, which provides the time-stamped summary of different sutures being tested. Both the sensors, force filtering, OLED, and thermal printer are communicated by an advanced ATmega2560 controller. In order to validate the significance of the proposed design setup, Solidworks simulation for motion study is conducted, real experimental measurements of pull and destructive forces for different gauges of sutures are performed and verified with standards, and comparisons with other relevant devices/approaches in terms of being cost-effective and showing optimized methodology are also presented.