Title: Force-Based Viscosity and Elasticity Measurements for Material Biomechanical Characterisation with a Collaborative Robotic Arm Show Chinese title

Title: 基于力的粘度和弹性测量用于协作机械臂的材料生物力学表征

Abstract: Diagnostic activities, such as ultrasound scans and palpation, are relatively low-cost. They play a crucial role in the early detection of health problems and in assessing their progression. However, they are also error-prone activities, which require highly skilled medical staff. The use of robotic solutions can be key to decreasing the inherent subjectivity of the results and reducing the waiting list. For a robot to perform palpation or ultrasound scans, it must effectively manage physical interactions with the human body, which greatly benefits from precise estimation of the patient's tissue biomechanical properties. This paper assesses the accuracy and precision of a robotic system in estimating the viscoelastic parameters of various materials, including some tests on ex vivo tissues as a preliminary proof-of-concept demonstration of the method's applicability to biological samples. The measurements are compared against a ground truth derived from silicone specimens with different viscoelastic properties, characterised using a high-precision instrument. Experimental results show that the robotic system's accuracy closely matches the ground truth, increasing confidence in the potential use of robots for such clinical applications. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 诊断活动，如超声扫描和触诊，相对成本较低。 它们在早期发现健康问题和评估其进展中起着关键作用。 然而，这些活动也容易出错，需要高度专业的医疗人员。 使用机器人解决方案可以是减少结果固有主观性并减少等待名单的关键。 为了让机器人进行触诊或超声扫描，它必须有效地管理与人体的物理交互，这极大地受益于对患者组织生物力学特性的精确估计。 本文评估了机器人系统在估计各种材料（包括一些离体组织的测试）的粘弹性参数方面的准确性和精度，作为该方法适用于生物样本的初步概念验证演示。 测量结果与从具有不同粘弹性特性的硅胶标本中得出的基准真值进行比较，这些标本使用高精度仪器进行表征。 实验结果表明，机器人系统的准确性与基准真值非常接近，增强了对机器人在这些临床应用中潜在用途的信心。