Towards Standardized Acquisition With a Dual-Probe Ultrasound Robot for Fetal Imaging

Standardized acquisitions and diagnoses using robots and AI would potentially increase the general usability and reliability of medical ultrasound. Working towards this prospect, this letter presents the recent developments of a standardized acquisition workflow using a novel dual-probe ultrasound r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 6; no. 2; pp. 1059 - 1065
Main Authors: Housden, James, Wang, Shuangyi, Bao, Xianqiang, Zheng, Jia, Skelton, Emily, Matthew, Jacqueline, Noh, Yohan, Eltiraifi, Olla, Singh, Anisha, Singh, Davinder, Rhode, Kawal
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States IEEE 01.04.2021
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Abdomen
Controllability
Exact solutions
Force
Image acquisition
Image processing
Mathematical analysis
Medical imaging
Medical robots and systems
motion and path planning
Motion planning
Probes
Robots
Sensors
software-hardware integration for robot systems
Springs
Stability
Synchronism
Torque
Ultrasonic imaging
Ultrasonic testing
Ultrasound
Workflow
software-hardware integration for robot systems
Medical robots and systems
motion and path planning
ISSN:2377-3766, 2377-3766
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Standardized acquisitions and diagnoses using robots and AI would potentially increase the general usability and reliability of medical ultrasound. Working towards this prospect, this letter presents the recent developments of a standardized acquisition workflow using a novel dual-probe ultrasound robot, for a project known as intelligent Fetal Imaging and Diagnosis (iFIND). The workflow includes an abdominal surface mapping step to obtain a non-parametric spline surface, a rule-based end-point calculation method to position each individual joint, and a motor synchronization method to achieve a smooth motion towards a target point. The design and implementation of the robot are first presented in this letter and the proposed workflow is then explained in detail with simulation and volunteer experiments performed and analyzed. The closed-form analytical solution to the specific motion planning problem has demonstrated a reliable performance controlling the robot to move towards the expected scanning areas and the calculated proximity of the robot to the surface shows that the robot maintains a safe distance while moving around the abdomen. The volunteer study has successfully demonstrated the reliable working and controllability of the robot in terms of acquiring desired ultrasound views. Our future work will focus on improving the motion planning, and on integrating the proposed standardized acquisition workflow with newly-developed ultrasound image processing methods to obtain diagnostic results in an accurate and consistent way.
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This paper was recommended for publication by Editor Pietro Valdastri upon evaluation of the Associate Editor and Reviewers’ comments. This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust IEH Award (102431) and supported by the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Medical Engineering (WT203148/Z/16/Z). (James Housden and Shuangyi Wang are co-first authors.)
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2021.3056033