Development of robotic system for autonomous liver screening using ultrasound scanning device

Abstract

Physicians use ultrasound scans to do diagnosis by making real-time images of internal organs, because such scans are safe, inexpensive, and non-invasive. However, aging society and limited numbers of physician make it difficult for patients in remote areas to be diagnosed. Besides, physician's technical skills affect the interpretation of the scans and thus the results of the examination. Thus, development of a robotic system for remote diagnosis is required to solve the problems. For this purpose, we proposed the development of a robotic system for automatic ultrasound imaging focusing on human liver. In this paper, we present several elements developed for the robotic system. First element is an algorithm for estimating the position of liver to guide the probe to scan initial position which is the epigastric region. Second element is ultrasound probe scanning protocol design to obtain whole image of the liver. Third element is force control algorithm to maintain the contact between the probe and human body even though the patient is breathing. Fourth element is an algorithm for detecting and correcting the probe's position when improper ultrasound images occurred. These algorithms with an implementation program control the apparatus: a Mitsubishi Electric's MELFA RV-1 six axis manipulator and tested on human subjects. The results confirmed the effectiveness of the approach.

An Ultrasound Robotic System Using the Commercial Robot UR5

“…This includes Pierrot et al (1999), where a system to create 3D images to monitor cardiovascular disease over time is described. A system for 3D reconstruction of lower limb arterial vessels is described in Janvier et al (2008Janvier et al ( , 2010, and in Mustafa et al (2013), an autonomous system is developed to perform liver screening using a Mitsubishi Electric industrial robot. This paper lists the requirements for a tele-operated robotic ultrasound system, which are extracted from a review of the current literature.…”

Automatic intraoperative optical coherence tomography positioning

“…However, they only calculate a position and do not actually carry out the positioning task. A method conducting a fully autonomous scan of the liver using a robotic ultrasound system was put forward [11]. The method is, however, limited to one specific organ.…”

Manipulator Control System for Remote USG Examinantion

“…They allow the doctor to perform only small transitions and rotation of the USG probe in the region where assistant placed and held them. In the second group [11,12,16,18,24], independent robots are equipped with manipulators (usually anthropomorphic) which allows the physician to perform full control of the probe position and orientation. The ReMeDi arm mechanics and control system were designed to give the physician the operational ability addressed by the second group.…”