An Ergonomic Grip Design Process for Vaginal Ultra Sound Probe Based on Analyses of Benchmarking, Hand Data, and Grip Posture

The present study presents a systematic design process for the ergonomic design of a vaginal probe based on benchmarking, hand data, and grip posture analyses. Five existing vaginal grip designs were compared with each other using subjective measures to identify preferred design features for a new probe grip design. An in-depth analysis of the relationships between grip design variables and hand dimensions was conducted along with the consideration of preferred grip postures of vaginal probe and hand measurements. Two novel vaginal probe grip designs were proposed based on the analysis results of benchmarking, hand data, and grip posture. A validation experiment showed a significant improvement of the hand-data based vaginal grip design compared with the existing designs in terms of subjective satisfaction and wrist flexion.