Development of a Wearable Hardness Sensor for Internal Examination without Impairing the Physician’s Sense of Touch

Abstract

In this paper, we present a wearable hardness sensor for internal examination. We have developed a wearable tactile sensor that allows conventional internal examination without impairing the user's sense of touch at the sensing. It is possible to adopt an appropriate sensing posture by the user's sensorimotor control. The developed sensor is based on the principle of acoustic reflection and evaluates the hardness of an object by the measurement of the pressure distribution through two acoustic paths with different hardness. The sensor was made with soft materials, making it suitable for internal examination from the standpoint of safety. Evaluation experiments using models of the cervix with different hardness showed that the developed sensor discriminated the hardness, indicating that the sensor might be available for internal examination.