Comparing FBG and PCF Force Sensors in a Laparoscopic Smart Surgical Scissor Instrument

This paper presents a sensorized laparoscopic surgical scissor instrument using both a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and a tapered photonic crystal fiber (PCF) as force sensors. The sensors are located on the blades for the detection of interaction forces generated between the instrument and tissue during cutting. The force sensitivity of each sensorized blade is examined. Results show that the scissor blade-PCF sensor arrangement outperforms the blade with the FBG during static loading calibration experimentation. Moreover, experiments show that the PCF based arrangement is less sensitive to temperature effects than its FBG counterpart. This negates the need for additional temperature compensation sensors and techniques. The PCF sensor was shown to have higher strain measurement sensitivity (2 pm/με) than the FBG sensor (1.2pm/με)