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Drilling Electrode for Real-Time Measurement of Electrical Impedance in Bone Tissues

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Abstract

In order to prevent possible damages to soft tissues, reliable monitoring methods are required to provide valuable information on the condition of the bone being cut. This paper describes the design of an electrical impedance sensing drill developed to estimate the relative position between the drill and the bone being drilled. The two-electrode method is applied to continuously measure the electrical impedance during a drill feeding movement: two copper wire brushes are used to conduct electricity in the rotating drill and then the drill is one electrode; a needle is inserted into the soft tissues adjacent to the bone being drilled and acts as another electrode. Considering that the recorded electrical impedance is correlated with the insertion depth of the drill, we theoretically calculate the electrode-tissue contact impedance and prove that the rate of impedance change varies considerably when the drill bit crosses the boundary between two different bone tissues. Therefore, the rate of impedance change is used to determine whether the tip of the drill is located in one of cortical bone, cancellous bone, and cortical bone near a boundary with soft tissue. In vitro experiments in porcine thoracic spines were performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the impedance sensing drill. The experimental results indicate that the drill, used with the proposed data-processing method, can provide accurate and reliable breakthrough detection in the bone-drilling process.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the National Science & Technology Pillar Program of China (Grant No. 2012BAI14B01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Room 602, Building Boling, No. 94, Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Yu Dai & Jianxun Zhang

  2. Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Yuan Xue

Authors
  1. Yu Dai
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  2. Yuan Xue
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  3. Jianxun Zhang
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Correspondence to Yu Dai.

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Associate Editor Sean S. Kohles oversaw the review of this article.

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Dai, Y., Xue, Y. & Zhang, J. Drilling Electrode for Real-Time Measurement of Electrical Impedance in Bone Tissues. Ann Biomed Eng 42, 579–588 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-013-0938-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-013-0938-8

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