Bionic Sensor for Evaluating Applied Force in a Retinal Surgical Simulator

To evaluate surgeons’ skills and medical devices, interaction between surgical instruments and a physical surgery simulator can be measured by various sensors. This study proposes sensors for a physical surgery model which accurately replicates mechanical properties of human tissues using synthetic materials, and we named such sensors as ”Bionic Sensors”. As an example, we attempted to integrate a sensor measures the force applying to the fundus retina, into an eye surgery simulator, Bionic-EyE™. We designed a cantilever-type load sensor using a quartz crystal resonator (QCR) with a highly load resolution and wide dynamic range and integrated it in the fundus part of Bionic-EyE™ as a Bionic Sensor. The interaction of a microforceps and the fundus part was measured in a simulated task of the inner limiting membrane (ILM) peeling, and the maximum indentation load was approximately 20 mN when the task was performed by a skilled surgeon. The high sensitivity of the bionic sensor designed to measure the millinewton-order indentation force for the ILM peeling task was successfully demonstrated.