Robot-assisted ultrasound imaging: Overview and development of a parallel telerobotic system

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is frequently used in medicine. The quality of ultrasound images is often dependent on the skill of the sonographer. Several researchers have proposed robotic systems to aid in ultrasound image acquisition. In this paper we first provide a short overview of robot-assisted ultrasound imaging (US). We categorize robot-assisted US imaging systems into three approaches: autonomous US imaging, teleoperated US imaging, and human-robot cooperation. For each approach several systems are introduced and briefly discussed. We then describe a compact six degree of freedom parallel mechanism telerobotic system for ultrasound imaging developed by our research team. The long-term goal of this work is to enable remote ultrasound scanning through teleoperation. This parallel mechanism allows for both translation and rotation of an ultrasound probe mounted on the top plate along with force control. Our experimental results confirmed good mechanical system performance with a positioning error of < 1 mm. Phantom experiments by a radiologist showed promising results with good image quality.

Design of automatic transabdominal ultrasound imaging system

“…However, their field of view is highly limited. Moreover, there are many other systems available which are not further described here [39], [19], [40], [41], [42], [43]. As discussed in this section, at the moment there are no developments or applications of automated ultrasound cervix scanning available, so that this research tries to fill that gap.…”

Manipulator Control System for Remote USG Examinantion

“…There is a quite wide variety of control system architectures dedicated for manipulators used in teleechography research. Most of them is based on classical manipulator control architecture with inner position [17] or velocity [16,31] control loop (usually with PID controller) at joint level. Joint references are computed in outer loop, which performs Cartesian cont-rol through velocity based (less often position based) inverse kinematics.…”

Medical telerobotic systems: current status and future trends

“…Various systems have been developed for robotic ultrasonography as described in [ 117 ] and the references therein. A prototype, portable robot named MELODY was developed based on the earlier Teresa system [ 49 ].…”