| Summary: | 碩士 === 南臺科技大學 === 機械工程系 === 106 === Mouth cancer or oral cancer can occur at any place in the oral cavity and has been consistently ranked among one of the top ten cancers in terms of mortality rates. Oral cancer is a global health issue affecting over 300,000 people each year with a survival rate of about 50%, which is among the lowest for all the major cancers. Consequently, great efforts are being made to develop new diagnostic techniques that can enable early detection. In current clinical settings, when a patient undergoes an oral mucosal examination, the doctor mainly focuses on visual inspection and palpation. However, quantitative analysis cannot be performed and this process can be uncomfortable for certain patients, especially those suffering from oral submucosal fibrosis who find it difficult to open their mouth completely. In this study, we have developed novel pen-like hand held device with a miniaturized tactile sensor mounted on the top. The tactile sensor can be used to tap regions of the oral mucosa and gain quantitative information about the hardness or elasticity of oral mucosal and submucosal lesions without the need for doctors to insert their finger into the oral cavity. The sensing mechanism is based on a tandem spring model and consists of two components with varying stiffness, namely a hard inner structure embedded in a soft outer packaging. The voltage output of the piezoelectric sensing film is proportional to the localized normal stress exerted by each component and this differential output can be used to extract information about the elasticity of the oral lesion. To test the feasibility of the tactile sensor to differentiate between tissue hardness, we have contacted the sensor with different elastomeric silicone materials under the same applied force. The experiment confirmed that the sensor could identify the softness of different silicones having a Shore hardness range of 2~ 56 Shore A, corresponding to a Young's modulus of 0.204 ~ 3.096 MPa. A two- stage linear trend is observed with sensitivity of 0.302 for softer silicones (2 ~ 9 Shore A) and 0.091 for harder silicones (24 ~ 56 Shore A). The proposed pen like device is light, convenient and easy to use for the doctor and can enable more complete and quantitative analysis of oral cancer development and progression.
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