A novel sensor for real-time measurement of force and torque of colonoscope

Colonoscopy is widely used in the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal diseases due to its minimal invasiveness, convenience and efficiency. However, it has two problems: bowel perforation and looping. In order to overcome these problems, it is necessary to get the information of the force and posture of the distal end of the colonoscope in the colonoscopy procedure. Elsewhere, we have reported an approach to have a sensor on the hose of colonoscope, which is outside the human body, to infer the force information at the distal end which is inside the human body, via a kinetic model. This paper presents a work on developing such a sensor. The goal of this work is to improve the accuracy of the senor while maintaining its low cost.