Design of a Bio-Inspired 3D Orientation Coordinate System and Application in Robotised Tele-Sonography

International audienc

Robot-based tele-echography: clinical evaluation of the TER system in abdominal aortic exploration

OBJECTIVE: The TER system is a robot-based tele-echography system allowing remote ultrasound examination. The specialist moves a mock-up of the ultrasound probe at the master site, and the robot reproduces the movements of the real probe, which sends back ultrasound images and force feedback. This tool could be used to perform ultrasound examinations in small health care centers or from isolated sites. The objective of this study was to prove, under real conditions, the feasibility and reliability of the TER system in detecting abdominal aortic and iliac aneurysms. METHODS: Fifty-eight patients were included in 2 centers in Brest and Grenoble, France. The remote examination was compared with the reference standard, the bedside examination, for aorta and iliac artery diameter measurement, detection and description of aneurysms, detection of atheromatosis, the duration of the examination, and acceptability. RESULTS: All aneurysms (8) were detected by both techniques as intramural thrombosis and extension to the iliac arteries. The interobserver correlation coefficient was 0.982 (P < .0001) for aortic diameters. The rate of concordance between 2 operators in evaluating atheromatosis was 84% +/- 11% (95% confidence interval). CONCLUSIONS: Our study on 58 patients suggests that the TER system could be a reliable, acceptable, and effective robot-based system for performing remote abdominal aortic ultrasound examinations. Research is continuing to improve the equipment for general abdominal use

Robotic Ultrasound Imaging: State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives

Ultrasound (US) is one of the most widely used modalities for clinical intervention and diagnosis due to the merits of providing non-invasive, radiation-free, and real-time images. However, free-hand US examinations are highly operator-dependent. Robotic US System (RUSS) aims at overcoming this shortcoming by offering reproducibility, while also aiming at improving dexterity, and intelligent anatomy and disease-aware imaging. In addition to enhancing diagnostic outcomes, RUSS also holds the potential to provide medical interventions for populations suffering from the shortage of experienced sonographers. In this paper, we categorize RUSS as teleoperated or autonomous. Regarding teleoperated RUSS, we summarize their technical developments, and clinical evaluations, respectively. This survey then focuses on the review of recent work on autonomous robotic US imaging. We demonstrate that machine learning and artificial intelligence present the key techniques, which enable intelligent patient and process-specific, motion and deformation-aware robotic image acquisition. We also show that the research on artificial intelligence for autonomous RUSS has directed the research community toward understanding and modeling expert sonographers' semantic reasoning and action. Here, we call this process, the recovery of the "language of sonography". This side result of research on autonomous robotic US acquisitions could be considered as valuable and essential as the progress made in the robotic US examination itself. This article will provide both engineers and clinicians with a comprehensive understanding of RUSS by surveying underlying techniques.Comment: Accepted by Medical Image Analysi

A Review of Pneumatic Actuators Used for the Design of Medical Simulators and Medical Tools

International audienc

Robotic-assisted ultrasound for fetal imaging: Evolution from single-arm to dual-arm system

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. The development of robotic-assisted extracorporeal ultrasound systems has a long history and a number of projects have been proposed since the 1990s focusing on different technical aspects. These aim to resolve the deficiencies of on-site manual manipulation of hand-held ultrasound probes. This paper presents the recent ongoing developments of a series of bespoke robotic systems, including both single-arm and dual-arm versions, for a project known as intelligent Fetal Imaging and Diagnosis (iFIND). After a brief review of the development history of the extracorporeal ultrasound robotic system used for fetal and abdominal examinations, the specific aim of the iFIND robots, the design evolution, the implementation details of each version, and the initial clinical feedback of the iFIND robot series are presented. Based on the preliminary testing of these newly-proposed robots on 42 volunteers, the successful and reliable working of the mechatronic systems were validated. Analysis of a participant questionnaire indicates a comfortable scanning experience for the volunteers and a good acceptance rate to being scanned by the robots

TER: A Robot for Remote Ultrasonic Examination: Experimental Evaluations

This chapter: o Motivates the clinical use of robotic tele-echography o Introduces the TER system o Describes technical and clinical evaluations performed with TE

Spherical wrist dimensional synthesis adapted for tool-guidance medical robots

The objective of this article is to present the dimensional synthesis of serial or parallel spherical wrists, an important step in the design process of medical robots. This step is carried out to obtain optimal dimensions of tool-guidance medical robots. In this goal, we have first studied the specifications of two robots with different medical applications: one for minimally invasive surgery and one for tele-echography examination. Then, we have established that the medical needs expressed by the doctor were very different but the specifications in robotic terms have a lot of common points (kinematics, workspace, bulkiness). Both types of robots need a mobility of three rotations around a fixed point (trocar incision or probe contact point on patient’s skin). So a spherical wrist structure is adapted to their needs. An important constraint related to medical applications is that the robot must be compact to not obstruct the robot environment (medical personnel or patient). We perform dimensional synthesis allowing determination of dimensions of the mechanism for a spherical wrist, serial and parallel for a tele-echography robot, and serial for the minimally invasive surgery robot. We used multi-criteria optimization methods minimising a cost function to obtain both good kinematic performance and compactness for the structure. The difficulty and the difference between the presented studies are in the choice of design criteria describing the performance and the constraints of the robot. These parameters must faithfully represent the specifications of the robot so that its performance can respond to the medical requirements. We show, here, the different methods used for the chosen kinematic structure and the medical application. These studies lead to prototypes which are validated by medical experiments. This process of dimensional synthesis will be applied to other medical applications with different sets of specified constraints

Recent advances in robot-assisted echography: Combining perception, control and cognition

Echography imaging is an important technique frequently used in medical diagnostics due to low-cost, non-ionising characteristics, and pragmatic convenience. Due to the shortage of skilful technicians and injuries of physicians sustained from diagnosing several patients, robot-assisted echography (RAE) system is gaining great attention in recent decades. A thorough study of the recent research advances in the field of perception, control and cognition techniques used in RAE systems is presented in this study. This survey introduces the representative system structure, applications and projects, and products. Challenges and key technological issues faced by the traditional RAE system and how the current artificial intelligence and cobots attempt to overcome these issues are summarised. Furthermore, significant future research directions in this field have been identified by this study as cognitive computing, operational skills transfer, and commercially feasible system design