Sven-Thomas Antoni

Universität Hamburg, Hamburg University of Technology

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Sven-Thomas Antoni is a biomedical engineer whose research sits at the intersection of haptics, surgical robotics, and medical imaging. His most impactful work addresses the critical loss of tactile feedback in minimally invasive and robotic surgery. In his highly cited 2016 paper, Antoni proposed a novel method to estimate instrument-tissue interaction forces without modifying the surgical tool itself—an approach that avoids the cost, fragility, and sterilization issues of sensor-embedded instruments. This contribution, with 9 citations, has influenced subsequent work in force-sensing for robotic surgery. Antoni also advanced experimental methodology by developing a robotic 3D printing system to create realistic gelatin phantoms for biomedical evaluation, enabling reproducible, high-resolution soft-tissue models. His work on interactive gesture control for robotic microscopes explores intuitive human-robot interfaces, aiming to improve surgeon acceptance of autonomous systems. Additionally, Antoni applied formal verification techniques—model checking—to detect trigger loss in Doppler ultrasound-guided fetal cardiovascular MRI, demonstrating his versatility in combining computational methods with clinical imaging. Through these contributions, Antoni has helped bridge the gap between engineering innovation and practical surgical needs.