Abstract
In this paper, a palpation sensor system to detect lumps in soft palpation objects such as breast cancer is developed. During scanning of the developed sensor on the measuring objects, the reaction force applied to the contact part is measured by a load cell. And the lump is detected by find a peak waveform of the reaction force. Measuring objects embedding a lump with several conditions of depth and diameter are prepared. Palpation experiments for the measuring objects are conducted. And from the results, it was found the lump of 6mm in diameter embedded in 15mm in depth can be detected with the developed palpation sensor system. In addition, by investigation of relationships between the pressing depth of the sensor to measuring objects and the depth of the detected lump, it was suggested that the depth of lump can be estimated from the combination of results for different pressing depth conditions.
