A Flexible Sensor for Suture Training

Hospitals are required to train their medical staff to help improve their working conditions and provide quality healthcare for patients. Therefore, many types of studies on medical training simulators, particularly suturing skills, have been conducted. However, because of the drawbacks, such as inconvenience and the complicated configuration, most trainees do not use the developed simulator. We propose a new concept of a flexible sensor for suture training, which can be embedded into an artificial skin pad to measure the piercing location on a 2D plane (for flat and curved surfaces). Using the characteristics of conductive films, and the linear relationship between distance and output resistance, we developed a flexible suture sensor to estimate the piercing position. Then, experiments for characterization were conducted to assess the measurements. From the results, the average errors of the flat condition for the x and y coordinates are 0.3 and 0.31 mm, respectively. In addition, the errors of the curved condition for x andy are 0.81 and 1.09 mm, respectively. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed sensor and discuss its performance and limitations.