Prototype of A Novel Visuotactile Endoscope Probe

Endoscopes incorporating tactile sensing can significantly improve the efficiency of endoscopic diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately, traditional tactile endoscopes are difficult to guarantee the accuracy of tactile signals and high-quality visual images at the same time. In this paper, a novel visuotactile endoscope probe is proposed to obtain clear external visual images and rich tactile information simultaneously. The probe is composed of two parts: a miniatured camera and a gel module which is made of highly clear silicone with markers painted on its surface. The visual and tactile information can be extracted from the images captured by the vision system. Specifically, a marker detection and tracking algorithm is used to extract tactile features, and an image inpainting method is proposed to obtain clear vision effect. This study is a preliminary exploration of the visuotactile endoscope, which holds promising potential for in vivo palpation and broad applications in the medical field.