PALPABLE: Multi-sensing Tool for Minimally Invasive Surgery

 

Project Contributors (HMU):

  • Dr. Panagiotis Polygerinos (Team Lead)
  • Dr. Manolis Kymakis
  • Dr. Georgios Violakis
  • Ms. Maria Moutousi
  • Mr. Nikolaos Vardakis

 

Funding Source / Acknowledgements:

Financed by the European Union (Project 101092518 — PALPABLE)

PALPABLE’s official webpage
PALPABLE’s CORDIS webpage

Project Brief

PALPABLE will investigate the development of a novel tactile sensing probe to be used as a palpation tool for identification and visualization of tissue abnormalities during MIS.

Particularly, the following will be developed:

  • A pneumatically actuated flexible surgical tool end-effector (HMU)
  • A surgical probe with haptic sensory capacity
  • Non-planar photonics circuit for haptic sensor array interrogation
  • A distance sensing module for measuring tissue surface curvature (HMU)
  • Surface curvature and stiffness reconstruction algorithms

Partners

Related Publications

  • Georgios Violakis; Pantelis Antonakis; Emmanouil Kritsotakis; Theodoros Kozonis; Leonidas Chardalias; Apostolos Papalois; Georgios Agrogiannis; Effrosyni Kampouroglou; Nikolaos Vardakis; Stylianos Kostakis; Eleni Athanasaki; Zhenyu Zhang; Martin Angelmahr; Manousos Konstadoulakis; Panagiotis Polygerinos,: In-Vivo Study on the Safe Use of a Novel Intraoperative Sensing Tool for Tissue Stiffness Assessment in Endoscopic Surgery . In: Biosensors, vol. 15, iss. 9, no. 581, 2025, ISSN: 2079-6374.
  • Georgios Violakis; Nikolaos Vardakis; Zhenyu Zhang; Martin Angelmahr; Panagiotis Polygerinos,: Rapid and accurate shape sensing method using a multi-core Fiber Bragg Grating-based optical fiber. In: Sensors, vol. 25, no. 14, pp. 4494, 2025, ISSN: 1424-8220.
  • Zhenyu Zhang; Georgios Violakis; Abu Bakar Dawood; Ahmad Abdalwareth; Kaspar Althoefer; Panagiotis Polygerinos; Martin Angelmahr; Wolfgang Schade,: Fiber Bragg grating-based tactile sensing tool for minimally invasive surgery. In: SPIE Photonics West BiOS, pp. 1331002, SPIE, San Francisco, California, United States, 2025.
  • Maria Moutousi; Panagiotis Polygerinos,: Omnidirectional Soft Pneumatic Actuators: A Design and Optimization Framework. In: Frontiers In Robotics and AI, vol. 11, 2024.
  • Georgios Violakis; Eleni Athanasaki; Stylianos Kostakis; Nikolaos Tiriakidis; Kosmas Tiriakidis; Thomais Tiriakidou; Panagiotis Polygerinos,: Single-to-four core optical fiber coupling using a two-photon polymerization produced waveguide. In: Optics Express, vol. 32, iss. 8, pp. 14240-14251, 2024.
  • Ilias Zournatzis; Sotiris Kalaitzakis; Panagiotis Polygerinos,: SoftER: A spiral soft robotic ejector for sorting applications. In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, iss. 11, 2023.