Abstract
The morbidity rate of arteriosclerosis is high in cardiovascular disease. The diagnosis and operations method of the artery diseases generally have been done by the feeling and experience of medical doctors. The highaccurate identification of the diseased part of artery is important in the excision and substitution operation of the hardened artery. Then, the establishment of the method which can identify the diseased part of the artery is needed for the high-accurate operation. This identification method is developed by haptical technology based on the mechanics of palpation. The mechanics of the palpation is analyzed using Hertian contact theory and derives the objective data of the artery stiffness simply by pinching the artery with the probe imitating human's fingers. Here, the pinching method on the identification process is modified by the pulsatile blood pressure for the realization of in situ observation. The developed method is verified by using an artificial system of circulatory organ, which was newly developed for this research. The introduced technique was validated by the comparison among some results measured by different method, and then its usefulness was verified.
