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The purpose of this report is to propose portable and attachable tele-echography robot system: FASTele. Focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) is important for patients who have shock by internal bleeding. However, the patient has little time, and transportation to a hospital may take too long. A system which enables FAST more quickly is required. Therefore, we aim to develop a tele-echography (FAST) robot system that can be used by a paramedic easily for shock patient in ambulance or at injury scene. To develop the system, portability and usability (for paramedic) are significant issues. We developed a tele-echography robot system which has 4-DOF. The robot is attached to each roughly FAST areas of patient body (body-based set up) and remotely fine-tuned position by a specialist in a hospital. The robot can control the posture of probe by curvature rails. The mechanism that maintains passively the contact force between the probe and patient's body surface by using springs enables the robot small and lightweight. Feasibility experiments of FAST are reported.

This paper shows the focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) performance of a wearable tele-echography robot system we have developed that we call "FASTele". FAST is a first-step way of assessing the injury severity of patients suffering from internal bleeding who may be some time away from hospital treatment. So far, we have only verified our system's effectiveness under constantly wired network conditions. To determine its FAST performance within an emergency vehicle, we extended it to a WiMAX mobile network and performed experiments on it. Experiment results showed that paramedics could attach the system to FAST areas on a patient's body on the basis of the attaching position and procedure. We also assessed echo images to confirm that the system is able to extract the echo images required for FAST under maximum vehicle acceleration.

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