Development of "Patient Robot" ; training robot based on quantitative analysis of surgical technique

To establish an integrated evaluation system for a clinical surgeon and a surgical robot, our group has been proposed a new concept; a "Patient Robot", which is a sort of in vitro mock circulatory system that provides various types of coronary disease as a training machine for cardiac surgeons. The development of "Patient Robot" has been done by a following procedure, 1) Measurements, 2) Modelling, 3) In-vitro Simulation and 4) Evaluation. This paper focused on the rolls of 2) Modelling and 3) Simulation. As the modelling phase, Coronary artery and Graft vessels have been modelled by silicone ruber with an instruction by senior cardiac surgeons' sensitive tactual feeling through their interview. As a result of the interview and tensile test of the silicone vascular models, a favourable range of Young's modulus has been identified, which was <0.1 N/mm² (where ε=1.0). As for the Simulation phase, the silicone vascular models have been mounted on Coronary Circulation System, which is named "Scoring System". A waveform of blood flow has been obtained by using the "Scoring System" with the silicone vascular models. The waveform was similar to native coronary arterial blood flow. Also, it has been found that coronary arterial blood flow rate is adjustable by controlling the input of the heart rate to the Scoring System. As a conclusion, it has been expressed that it is possible to create a virtual surgical environment which is able to be controlled quantitatively.