Robotic three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound (US) imaging has been employed to overcome the drawbacks of traditional US examinations, such as high inter-operator variability and lack of repeatability. However, object movement remains a challenge as unexpected motion decreases the quality of the 3D compounding. Furthermore, attempted adjustment of objects, e.g., adjusting limbs to display the entire limb artery tree, is not allowed for conventional robotic US systems. To address this challenge, we propose a vision-based robotic US system that can monitor the object's motion and automatically update the sweep trajectory to provide 3D compounded images of the target anatomy seamlessly. To achieve these functions, a depth camera is employed to extract the manually planned sweep trajectory after which the normal direction of the object is estimated using the extracted 3D trajectory. Subsequently, to monitor the movement and further compensate for this motion to accurately follow the trajectory, the position of firmly attached passive markers is tracked in real-time. Finally, a step-wise compounding was performed. The experiments on a gel phantom demonstrate that the system can resume a sweep when the object is not stationary during scanning.
翻译:机器人三维(3D)超声波(US)成像已经用于克服美国传统检查的缺点,例如高操作器间变异性和缺乏重复性。然而,物体移动仍是一个挑战,因为意外运动会降低三维化合物的质量。此外,美国常规机器人系统不允许调整物体,例如调整四肢以显示整个肢体动脉树,不允许对物体进行调整。为了应对这一挑战,我们提议建立一个基于视觉的机器人美国系统,以监测物体的运动并自动更新扫描轨迹,以提供目标解剖的三维复合图像无缝。为了实现这些功能,将使用一个深度摄像头来提取手动规划的扫描轨迹,然后使用提取的三维轨道估计物体的正常方向。随后,为了监测运动并进一步补偿运动以准确跟踪轨道,将实时跟踪固定的被动标记的位置。最后,进行了一个渐进式的复合。在凝胶象上进行的实验表明,当物体在扫描过程中没有固定状态时,系统可以恢复扫描。