Haptically-Enabled Robotic Teleoperation for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TeleTMS).

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive and painless technique used in both clinical trials and research on cortical activity and brain networks. TMS involves the use of an electromagnetic coil, which can induce powerful but brief magnetic pulses. When the coil is headed against the scalp, it can induce electrical activity in underlying brain tissue. For effective results, the TMS coil should be in appropriate contact with patients' scalp and positioned for consistent stimulation. In many cases, it requires researchers and clinicians to not only hold and position the coil on subjects' head, also to take care to ensure appropriate and consistent contact between the TMS coil and subject's scalp. This task is noticeably tiresome for the operators considering weight of the coil and a dense cable attached to it. On the other side, the patient or participant has to sit motionless; otherwise, the contact will be lost and the stimulation will have a reduced impact. In this paper, we propose and develop a haptically-enabled teleoperated robotic platform that removes all those limitations and burdensome from both TMS operators and patients/participants. The operator, through a haptic interface, remotely controls a robotic arm holding the coil. This system provides the operator with the sense of touch to feel the contact force between the coil and patient/participant's head. Therefore, operators and patients/participants do not need to be in the same location while conducting TMS, including the “motor thresholding” procedure. This will offer a huge benefit to the healthcare services in rural areas. Experimental evaluations carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed robotic system.