Robot-Assisted Electrical Impedance Scanning system for 2D Electrical Impedance Tomography tissue inspection

The electrical impedance tomography (EIT) technology is an important medical imaging approach to show the electrical characteristics and the homogeneity of a tissue region noninvasively. Recently, this technology has been introduced to the Robot Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RAMIS) for assisting the detection of surgical margin with relevant clinical benefits. Nevertheless, most EIT technologies are based on a fixed multiple-electrodes probe which limits the sensing flexibility and capability significantly. In this study, we present a method for acquiring the EIT measurements during a RAMIS procedure using two already existing robotic forceps as electrodes. The robot controls the forceps tips to a series of predefined positions for injecting excitation current and measuring electric potentials. Given the relative positions of electrodes and the measured electric potentials, the spatial distribution of electrical conductivity in a section view can be reconstructed. Realistic experiments are designed and conducted to simulate two tasks: subsurface abnormal tissue detection and surgical margin localization. According to the reconstructed images, the system is demonstrated to display the location of the abnormal tissue and the contrast of the tissues' conductivity with an accuracy suitable for clinical applications.