Quantitative Evaluation of Automated Robot-Assisted Volumetric Breast Ultrasound

Abstract

Adding volumetric ultrasound (3DUS) to MRI

Robot-assisted biopsies on mr-detected lesions

“…If the preplanned patient-specific trajectory had small misalignments relative to the phantom, the controller could correct this. Additionally, the work presented by Nikolaev et al [120] shows that the quality of the obtained ultrasound volumes generated by this setup is comparable to regular B-mode ultrasound images.…”

“…Although exact numbers are missing, this deformation appears to be smaller than the deformations imposed by conventional scanners that compress the breast and similar to the deformations due to buoyancy in, e.g., the work of Nikolaev et al [65]. As a result, the images acquired with this setup are readily registered with preoperative MRI, as shown in Nikolaev et al [120].…”

“…Chapter 5 further elaborates on this topic and shows how scanning may be possible without patient specific information. Please refer to Nikolaev et al [120] for more information on the acquired ultrasound volumes. Next, the acquired ultrasound volume is registered with the MRI based on the detected markers (Figure 1.…”

“…The registration accuracy reported in Chapter 2 is 1.74 mm, whereas in the work presented by Nikolaev et al [120] the roboticcally acquired images were registered with MRI images with an accuracy of 3.4 mm. Fausto et al [64] reported a manual registration error of 4.2-5.8 mm.…”

“…For ultrasound acquisitions, the approach for ethical approval and the experimental process could be very similar to the work presented on the automated cone-based breast ultrasound scanner [65]. In ultrasound/MRI fusion, rigid transformations can be validated utilizing the external skin markers as presented in de Jong et al [119] or anatomical landmarks, as done in Nikolaev et al [120], as the gold standards. The accuracy of deformable transformations may be validated by well-trained experts or external measurement devices such as an RGB-D camera [215].…”