A new tactile probe called Elastirob has been designed and fabricated to measure the elasticity of soft biological tissues. Elastirob consists of a tactile probe, data processing system, and tactile display interface. The tactile probe uses a force sensing resistor sensor attached to a rigid bar that can apply step-wise compression via a stepper motor. The data processing system collects and prepares the sensor data and communicates with the tactile display and stepper motor. The tactile display, called TacPlay, allows users to view and analyze the stress-strain curves generated during testing to calculate elastic modulus. Initial testing of Elastirob showed it could successfully measure the elasticity of tissue samples and compare

1. Research article
Design and fabrication of a new tactile
probe for measuring the modulus of elasticity
of soft tissues
Hamid Roham, Siamak Najarian and Seyed Mohsen Hosseini
Artificial Tactile Sensing and Robotic Surgery Lab, Department of Biomechanics, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering,
Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and
Javad Dargahi
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to discuss the design, fabrication, communication, testing, and simulation of a new tactile probe called Elastirob used to
measure the modulus of elasticity of biological soft tissues and soft materials.
Design/methodology/approach – Both finite element modeling and experimental approaches were used in this analysis. Elastirob, with the ability to
apply different rates of strain on testing specimens, is accompanied by a tactile display called TacPlay. This display is a custom-designed user-friendly
interface and is able to evaluate the elasticity in each part of the stress-strain curve.
Findings – A new device is being constructed that can measure the modulus of elasticity of a sensed object. The results of Elastirob applied on two
specimens are reported and compared by the results of experiments obtained by an industrial testing machine. Acceptable validations of Elastirob were
achieved from the comparisons.
Research limitations/implications – The designed system can be miniaturized to be used in minimally invasive surgeries in the future.
Practical implications – Elastirob determines the elasticity by drawing the stress-strain curve and then calculating its slope. The combination of
the force sensing resistor, microcontroller and stepper motor provides Elastirob with the ability to apply different rates of strain on testing
specimens.
Originality/value – It can be employed in both in vivo and in vitro tests for measuring stiffness of touch objects. For the first time, a device has been
designed and tested which is a few orders of magnitude smaller than its industrial counterparts and has considerably lower weight.
Keywords Elasticity, Robotics, Tactile sensors, Medical equipment, Histology
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Various properties of biological tissues have been a subject of
interest in various medical applications, based on the fact that
these properties contain a lot of useful information including
age, gender, and whether the organ is healthy or not. Among
these properties are Young’s modulus (or stiffness), Poisson’s
ratio, and viscosity. Perhaps, the most important parameter
among them is Young’s modulus, because of its dependence
upon the composition of the tissue. Consequently, changes in
soft tissue stiffness may be related to an abnormal
pathological complication. Examples include breast, liver
and prostate cancers (Plewes et al., 2000; Samani et al., 2003;
Galea, 2004).
There are different methods to investigate the elasticity of
soft tissues. Gao et al. (1996) surveyed some of the previous
work done in the related field of biomechanics and
measurement techniques. In the first part of their review,
they considered elastography as a merger of several related
fields of study: tissue elastic constant (biomechanics), tissue
contrast differences, tissue motion by using imaging systems
(X-ray, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging), and
vibrating targets by using coherent radiation (laser, sonar and
ultrasound) (Gao et al., 1996). In recent years, atomic force
microscopy (AFM) has been successfully applied to local
elasticity measurements especially in biological fields.
However, inevitable use of a cantilever results in difficultiesThe current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0260-2288.htm
Sensor Review
27/4 (2007) 317–323
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0260-2288]
[DOI 10.1108/02602280710821452]
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Center of Excellence in
Biomedical Engineering of Iran, for their help in conducting this
project. The authors also thank the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent
Systems and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada for providing the financial support for this project.
317

2. in measurements and in sample preparation. Furthermore,
the high cost of AFM systems prevents their widespread
industrial and clinical use (Vinckier and Semenza, 1998). In
addition to aforementioned methods, tactile sensing
technology is another approach with which the
measurement of soft tissue elasticity is possible. This
technology tries to imitate the sense of touch which is of
crucial importance in the field of minimally invasive surgery
(MIS) and robotic surgery. Lee and Nicholls (1999) and Lee
(2000) examined the state-of-the-art of tactile sensing in its
mechatronic aspects. After that Eltaib and Hewit (2003)
reviewed the tactile sensing technology for minimal access
surgery. They addressed the technology from different
viewpoints including tactile sensing, tactile data processing,
and tactile display. Dargahi and Najarian (2004, 2005)
accomplished two comprehensive surveys on this field of
research. At first, they reviewed the human tactile perception
as a standard for this technology and secondly, they evaluated
the advances in tactile sensors and its impact on robotics
applications.
2. Tactile elasticity measurements background
Various tactile sensors have been reported to measure the
elasticity of living tissues from the cellular levels (Miyazaki et al.,
2000) to organs (Kusaka et al., 2000). In Murayama et al.
(2004), Young’s modulus of zona pellucida of bovine ovum was
calculated using micro-tactile sensor (MTS) fabricated using
piezoelectric (PZT) material. The sensor consists of a needle-
shaped transduction point made by using a micro-electrode
puller and mounted on a micro-manipulator platform. In Uchio
et al. (2002), the stiffness of the cartilage of the human femoral
condyles via an ultrasonic tactile sensor under arthroscopic
control was measured. The tactile sensor was useful for
determining the intraoperative stiffness of healthy and diseased
human cartilage in all grades. In Shikida et al. (2003) and
Hasegava et al. (2004), a new type of tactile sensor that can
detect both the contact force and hardness of an object along
with its fabrication process is developed. In Murayama and
Omata (2004), characteristics of local elasticity are evaluated by
a new type of MTS, based on simple ultrasonic contact sensing.
Its high sensitivity is appropriate for micro-scale measurement.
In Omata et al. (2004) and Murayama et al. (2005), a novel
tactile sensor system is presented which is specifically designed
to detect and quantify, in real time, tissue characteristics in a
manner analogous to the human hand. It is suggested that this
sensor may prove useful in applications involving robotics in the
biomedical field and can be incorporated in the next generation
of virtual operating systems. This sensor, then, is modified not
only to measure elasticity with high sensitivity but also to detect
the instant of contact. In Sedaghati et al. (2005), the main
objective of the proposed tactile sensor is to design and model a
piezoelectric sensor capable of measuring the total applied force
on the sensed object as well as its compliance. This tactile sensor
consisting of PVDF films exhibits high force sensitivity and
good linearity in order to be integrated with the commercial
endoscope graspers used in MIS. In Najarian et al. (2006b), a
new method for determining the compliance of various objects
with different mechanical properties is presented. Two
theoretical approaches are employed in this work. The first
approach is a closed-form formula and the second one is based
on finite element analysis, which is applied to the objects with
complex irregular shapes. The researchers managed to measure
the stiffness of the sensed objects with reasonable accuracy
(an error of about 20 percent). Comparing the experimental
data with the analytical and the numerical approaches proves
that there is a good correspondence between the two methods.
In Dargahi et al. (2006), the sensitivity of a novel tactile probe is
investigated both experimentally and theoretically which has
applications both in routine clinical examination and during
robotic surgeries.
In addition to the capability of tactile sensing approach in
measuring elasticity, demonstrated by aforementioned research
work, there are a number of reports focusing on detecting
tumors inside biological tissues by this approach. In fact,
because certain types of tissues such as malignant lesions have
elastic properties that are markedly different from surrounding
tissues, elasticity measurements may lead to detect tumors.
Barman and Guha (2006) designed a deformable force-stretch
array capable of detecting indwelling nodules. The results show
that the sensor enables the identification of relatively small and
deep seated nodules. Hosseini et al. (2006, 2007a, b, c) proved
the reliability and accuracy of the artificial tactile sensing
approach for detection of tumors in the biological tissues using
finite element method and Najarian et al. (2006a) proposed a
new analytical method that can be employed as a predictive tool
for determining both the stiffness and certain details of the
geometry of embedded objects. The results of these
investigations can be directly applied to the incorporation of
tactile sensing in artificial palpation.
In this research work, a comprehensive tactile sensory
system called Elastirob which consists of a tactile probe, a
tactile data processing system, and a custom-designed tactile
display (TacPlay) is developed to measure the elasticity of
biological soft tissues. Both the electronics and the
mechanical sections were designed and constructed in our
lab. The combination of the components used to construct
Elastirob along with its specific user-friendly TacPlay software
allows the medical staff to measure the elasticity of diverse soft
tissues by applying different strain rates.
3. Materials and methods
A tactile sensing system is designed which is capable of
estimating the modulus of elasticity of soft tissues by drawing
their stress-strain curves and calculating the slope of the
curves. This tactile sensing system, which is called Elastirob
by the authors, consists of three basic components: a tactile
probe, a tactile data processing system, and a tactile display
system. Elastirob prepares the stress-strain curve by preparing
a considerable number of the individual points of the curve
and applying curve fitting method to all of them. These
individual points are obtained when the tactile probe with its
sensor, makes a physical contact with a target object. This
contact causes compression between the sensor and target
object. Therefore, since the tactile probe is designed to be
able to make step-by-step compression by using a stepper
motor, tactile data processing and tactile display systems can
process and display the output information of the sensor to
obtain the individual points of the stress-strain curve.
3.1 Tactile probe
The tactile probe of Elastirob comprises of five parts:
1 sensor;
2 rigid bar;
Design and fabrication of a new tactile probe
Hamid Roham et al.
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318

3. 3 stepper motor;
4 motion converter; and
5 supporting base.
These parts are shown in Figure 1. A force sensing resistor
(FSR) (Interlink Electronics, Camarillo, CA) was used in
Elastirob as the system tactile sensor. FSRs are polymeric
films which exhibit a decrease in resistance with an increase in
the force applied to the active surface. Their force sensitivity is
optimized for use in human touch control of electronic
devices. This quality makes this kind of sensor appropriate for
use in tactile sensory systems that deal with the special
configuration of forces.
In order to provide effective contacts between the FSR and
testing specimens, a short rigid bar was prepared, and then the
sensor was stuck to one of its end. The rigid bar is connected to
the motion converter mechanism from its other end. This special
design provides the sensor with vertical contacts which is of
critical importance when using FSRs to measure normal forces.
Although the motion of the rigid bar is originated from the
stepper motor, since it provides rotational motion, a motion
converter mechanism was constructed to generate the vertical
linear motion of the rigid bar. The motion converter mechanism
contains a system of gears meshed together to pass motion along.
In addition to providing vertical linear motion, it increases the
accuracy and resolution of the rigid bar movement by its two
specific features. Firstly, the special design of its rack and pinion
transmissiondrive prevents backlashthatcan causeinaccuracyin
therigidbar movement.Thisfeatureisobtainedbydesigningtwo
rows of gears working beside each other. One of the gears is
located 0.2mm in front of the other one. It is under pressure by a
spring behind it, thus, avoiding loose contact between gears.
Secondly, the conversion ratio of its tiny gear box increases the
resolution of movement, i.e. a five-step rotation of the stepper
motor moves the rigid bar toward the target object by only a
distance of 0.02 mm.
The selected stepper motor (Shinano Company, Culver
City, CA) has a step angle equal to 1.88 that causes the high
resolution and accurate rate of compression. In this particular
application, one of the most important advantages of using
stepper motors is that they do not need feedback for position
control if their torqueses are chosen correctly. The supporting
base is a solid L-shaped structure on which the other parts
were installed. Additionally, the very smooth bottom of this L-
shaped structure provides a suitable firm place to put the
testing specimens. A typical specimen is also shown in its
place in Figure 1.
3.2 Tactile data processing
Tactile data processing is an important aspect of any tactile
sensing system. In Elastirob, an electronic board gathers data
sent from the FSR and performs the initial process on them
and then makes data ready to be transmitted to the tactile
display system. The other task of this board is to get the orders
and settings of the users via the tactile display interface and
transfer them to the stepper motor.
The FSR converts the variations of forces applied on
its active surface to changes in resistance, then, the prepared
Op-Amp in the board converts changes in resistance to
changes in voltage that is suitable to be processed by other
electronic devices. An AVR microcontroller (ATMEGA32)
has been selected to receive the sent data from the Op-Amp.
The output of Op-Amp is connected to an analogue-to-digital
converter (ADC) of the microcontroller. The internal ADC of
the AVR decreases the amount of necessary hardware of the
electronic board. To supply a suitable and accurate reference
voltage for the ADC, a sensitive voltage regulator chip
(LM317) accompanied by a sensitive multi-turn for its
settings has been used. The microcontroller prepares received
data from the FSR to be sent to the tactile display system. In
order to apply users’ settings, the electronic board of Elastirob
communicates with both the tactile probe and tactile display
system. It receives settings from the tactile display via a serial
port and after some necessary processing, sends desired
signals to the stepper motor. The levels of voltages on the
serial port of a personal computer and those of the
microcontroller are not compatible. That is, the serial port
sends and receives its signals in 12 V, but the microcontroller
and other components used in the electronic board, work and
communicate with just 5 V. A proper chip (MAX232) has
been used to solve this problem. The microcontroller sends its
signals to the stepper motor via another chip (ULN2004) that
Figure 1 Tactile probe parts with a specimen in its place
3-Stepper
motor
4-Motion
converter
1-FSR
sensor
5-Supporting
base
2-Rigid bar
Specimen
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4. firstly has its external power supply (driving the stepper motor
directly with the ports of the microcontroller can harm the
used ports) and secondly, drives the stepper motor that works
with 12 V. The prepared parallel port on the board facilitates
the programming of the microcontroller and the possible
additional modifications. For safety of the PC, the parallel
port is connected to the electronic board via an Opto Coupler.
In addition, for the users’ convenience, a switch to move
the probe in both upward and downward directions has been
prepared on the electronic board. Figure 2 shows the tactile
probe connected with tactile data processing system.
3.3 Tactile display system
In principle, a tactile system should sense tactile stimuli in a
remote environment, and present them to the users with the
best possible fidelity. TacPlay is a piece of custom-designed
software prepared by the authors which is dedicated
specifically to Elastirob in order to create a user-friendly
environment. This software facilitates the use of Elastirob and
is designed by the graphical user interface of MATLAB 7.1 to
lead users with relevant massages while using it.
TacPlay has three distinct areas in its user interface display:
areas for test adjustments, test result, and test stress-strain
curve. The test adjustments help the user before, during and
after a test with Elastirob. For running an experiment, first, it is
necessary to define the thickness of the specimen in its relevant
text box. Users can adjust the interval between signals sent to
the stepper motor via combo box named “Step Interval (ms)”.
This feature is another special capability of our system which
enables the operators to examine the effect of changing the
strain rate on the stress-strain curve and the modulus of
elasticity. This advantage is the direct result of using a stepper
motor that can rotate step-by-step, a microcontroller that can
accept various settings in its program, and TacPlay that helps
the users to set their favorite strain rate.
By pressing the “Open com” soft key, TacPlay asks Elastirob to
be prepared for starting its job. By pressing the “Start” soft key,
probe moves toward the specimen, and as soon as it touches the
specimen, the data processing system starts to collect the force
data from the FSR and position data from the stepper motor.
Pressing the “Received com” soft key lets the data enter the
software from the microcontroller. The compressing of the
specimen will stop by pressing the “Stop” soft key. While the user
stopsthe compression,TacPlayplotsthe stress-strain curve ofthe
specimen. The slope of the stress-strain curve, which is the
modulus of elasticityof the tested specimen, may vary at different
parts of the curve. TacPlay can calculate the slope of the curve
between any two selected points of the curve. This character is
one of the advantages of TacPlay that provides the possibility to
investigate the modulus of elasticity of various soft tissues with
diverse mechanical behavior. Pressing the “Close com” soft key
stops the communication between TacPlay and Elastirob.
4. Results and discussion
The results of tests with two different kinds of soft silicon
rubber with different modulus of elasticity were chosen to be
reported. Both specimens were circular objects with 3.5 cm in
diameter and 7 mm in thickness. In order to examine the
consistency of the results, each specimen was tested four
times and then the average was calculated. The result of each
test and the average for both specimens are presented in
Table I. Figures 3 and 4 show the results of Elastirob
displayed by TacPlay for the two specimens obtained in one of
their tests. To compare Elastirob results, a different evaluative
approach was employed, i.e. we used an industrial testing
machine to do the same experiments.
An industrial testing machine (Zwick/Roell Company, Ulm,
Germany) available in our lab was used in all runs. It has specific
grippers which are specialized for conducting tension and
compression tests on biological tissues and biomaterials. The
abilities to adjust the strain rate and total displacement of the
probe of this machine helped us generate similar conditions of
experiments to those of Elastirob. Figure 5 shows the
experimental setup of the testing machine. The output of this
Figure 2 Tactile probe connected with tactile data processing peripherals
Tactile
probe
Electronic
board
Power
supply
Serial
port
Parallel
port
Table I Elastirob tests results
Modulus of elasticity (kPa)
Test No. Specimen No. 1 Specimen No. 2
1 1,324.35 741.005
2 1,400.22 828.519
3 1,337.73 651.829
4 1,324.35 697.776
Results, average 1,346.66 729.78
Design and fabrication of a new tactile probe
Hamid Roham et al.
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5. machine is force versus displacement. Consequently, in order to
have meaningful comparisons, the results of the experiments
were converted to stress versus strain. Figures 6 and 7 show the
comparison between the results of Elastirob and those of the
testing machine. They show that although the curves obtained
from Elastirob and testing machine experiments are not
coincident, it can be inferred that the slopes of the curves in
most regions of the graphs closely follow each other with an
acceptable accuracy. For example, the difference between the
average results of specimen No. 2 obtained by the two devices is
less than 6 percent.
5. Conclusion
The tactile sensor system presented here, consisting of an
FSR sensor, a stepper motor with its rotating to linear motion
Figure 3 Elastirob result (TacPlay) for specimen No. 1
Figure 4 Elastirob result (TacPlay) for specimen No. 2
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6. converter, an electronic board for processing data and
controlling the system motion, and its unique TacPlay
software, is able to measure the modulus of elasticity of
various kinds of soft tissues and biomaterials. Elastirob will
greatly contribute to the field of tactile sensing technology
since all information is acquired by just simple physical
contacts of the probe with testing specimens. Moreover, low
costs of construction, the capability of being miniaturized, the
flexibility of programming and changing the test adjustments
because of using the combination of the FSR, microcontroller
and stepper motor, are the specific Elastirob characteristics
which make it an appropriate device to be developed for
robotic surgery and telemedicine. In addition, TacPlay is very
user-friendly and can guide users through measuring process
with its appropriate massages and can prevent possible
mistakes. The capability of changing the step interval between
every steps of the stepper motor in TacPlay allows the
operators to investigate the effect of strain rate and examine
tissue response with regard to the modulus of elasticity of soft
tissues.
Figure 5 Setup of testing machine experiments
Probe
Testing
machine
Specimen
Controlling
software
Figure 6 Comparison between Elastirob and testing machine results
for specimen No. 1
Specimen No. 1
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
0 0.02 0.04 0.06
Strain (m/m)
Stress(Pa)
Elastirob
Testing
machine
Figure 7 Comparison between Elastirob and testing machine results
for specimen No. 2
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
Stress(Pa)
Specimen No. 2
0 0.02 0.04 0.06
Strain (m/m)
Elastirob
Testing
machine
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Corresponding author
Siamak Najarian can be contacted at: najarian@aut.ac.ir
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