Title
An Admittance-Controlled Robotic Assistant for Semi-Autonomous Breast Ultrasound Scanning
Abstract
Ultrasound imaging has been shown to successfully diagnose and provide visual assistance during treatment of breast cancer. However, human operators (i.e., technicians and clinicians) provide limited repeatability when performing the imaging scans. Current state-of-the-art automated breast volume scanners (ABVS) have high repeatability but deform the breast tissue significantly, which is undesirable for percutaneous therapies such as brachytherapy. A semi-autonomous system is presented here which leverages the accuracy of a serial manipulator-design robotic assistant to maintain the ultrasound probe at an optimal angle and ensure stable contact with minimal tissue deformation. Positioning of the probe across the surface of the breast is left in the hands of the human operator and is enabled through an admittance controller for the robot. A feasibility study is performed through a comparison of imaging quality for ultrasound scans of a simulated seroma in a phantom tissue when performed with human-in-the-loop and fully-autonomous modalities. The system was evaluated in a user trial showing similar image quality performance to a fully-autonomous position-controlled scanning device.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/ISMR.2019.8710206
2019 International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR)
Keywords
Field
DocType
admittance-controlled robotic assistant,semiautonomous breast ultrasound scanning,ultrasound imaging,visual assistance,breast cancer,imaging scans,breast tissue,percutaneous therapies,semiautonomous system,serial manipulator-design robotic assistant,ultrasound probe,minimal tissue deformation,admittance controller,ultrasound scans,phantom tissue,human-in-the-loop,fully-autonomous modalities,fully-autonomous position-controlled scanning device,state-of-the-art automated breast volume scanner
Biomedical engineering,Breast ultrasound,Human operator,Imaging phantom,Image quality,Brachytherapy,Scanner,Admittance,Physics,Ultrasound
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-5386-7826-8
0
0.34
References 
Authors
6
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jay Carriere144.27
Jason Fong222.76
Tyler Meyer300.68
Ron Sloboda4269.55
Siraj Husain501.35
Nawaid Usmani63610.57
Mahdi Tavakoli722349.03