A Miniature Triaxial Fiber Optic Force Sensor for Flexible Ureteroscopy.

Objective: Design and evaluate a miniature triaxial fiber optic sensor which is integrated into the confined space at the tip of a flexible ureteroscope to measure the contact force during ureteroscopy.

Methods: A notched flexure of multilayer continuous beams is deliberately designed to modulate the sensor sensitivity to axial stiffness but not to lateral bending and torsion, and to avoid the crosstalk between axial and lateral forces. Its structure parameters are optimized by the finite element method to meet the needs of miniaturization and performance.

Signal Feature Analysis of Contact Force at the Tip of a Flexible Ureteroscope.

This paper presents a signal analysis approach to identify the contact objects at the tip of a flexible ureteroscope. First, a miniature triaxial fiber optic sensor based on Fiber Bragg Grating(FBG) is devised to measure the interactive force signals at the ureteroscope tip. Due to the multidimensional properties of these force signals, the principal components analysis(PCA) method is introduced to reduce dimensions.