This EAGER project will create an innovative system to allow medical professionals to use their sense of touch to explore data obtained from ultrasound imaging scans. Physicians routinely rely on palpation during physical examination, exploring the size, location, and mechanical response of organs or body parts with their hands and fingers. The high-resolution, three-dimensional images produced by sophisticated imaging systems are essential tools in modern medicine; the results of this project will enable diagnosticians to interactively touch, feel, and manipulate objects in these images. The project entails the integration of a recently developed ultrasonic imaging methods with a glove-like interface that will use pneumatic actuators to accurately simulate the mechanical response of the imaged tissue. The project will benefit public health through early and accurate detection of cancerous tumors, and reduction of unnecessary, invasive biopsies.
The mechanical properties of an abnormal growth may be important in determining whether it is cancerous. Combining speed-of-sound measurement, which correlates to bulk modulus, and elastography, which correlates to shear modulus, allows estimation of the local elasticity tensor at each point in the imaged region. This project will create a pneumatically actuated haptic device for the hands and fingers, that uses this data to accurately simulate the feel of physical palpation. This mode of data display emulates the process of physical examination, and is thereby naturally leverages basic medical training, rather than requiring new, counter-intuitive, skills to interpret an artificial visualization. The project will establish whether adding this haptic feedback to existing diagnostic scans will lead to better diagnostic outcomes. The EAGER project will include extensive evaluation of the ability of the device to convey subtle and diagnostically relevant differences in the mechanical properties of soft tissue.
