Towards Palpation in Virtual Reality by an Encountered-Type Haptic Screen

Virtual Reality technology takes in an increasingly prominent role in modern medical training programs. The fidelity of the Virtual Reality environment is of crucial importance and directly relates to the quality of skill transfer. To train interventions that rely on physical interaction with the patient, high-quality haptic feedback should be provided. Palpation is a prototypical example of an important medical skill relying heavily on physical interaction. Since the interaction is quite involved and thus complex to render, very few training systems have attempted to train palpation so far and none of those provide a truly natural experience. In this work a novel haptic interface for free-hand palpation is presented. The interface follows the principle of an encountered-type robot replicating more naturally the actual palpation procedure. The concept and design of this new development are introduced. A control method to render spatially distributed kinaesthetic information is explained next. Experimental results give a proof-of-principle indicating that this approach might lead towards a more natural virtual palpation experience.