Automatic force-compliant robotic Ultrasound screening of abdominal aortic aneurysms

Virga S, Zettinig O, Esposito M, Pfister K, Frisch B, Neff T, Navab N, Hennersperger C (2016)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2016

Journal

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems IEEE

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Book Volume: 2016-November

Pages Range: 508-513

Conference Proceedings Title: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Event location: Daejeon, KOR

ISBN: 9781509037629

DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2016.7759101

Abstract

Ultrasound (US) imaging is commonly employed for the diagnosis and staging of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA), mainly due to its non-invasiveness and high availability. High inter-operator variability and a lack of repeatability of current US image acquisition impair the implementation of extensive screening programs for affected patient populations. However, this opens the way to a possible automation of the procedure, and recent works have exploited the use of robotic platforms for US applications, both in diagnostic and interventional scenarios. In this work, we propose a system for autonomous robotic US acquisitions aimed at the quantitative assessment of patients' vessel diameter for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening. Using a probabilistic measure of the US quality, we introduce an automatic estimation of the optimal pressure to be applied during the acquisition, and an online optimization of the out-of-plane rotation of the US probe to maximize the visibility of the aorta. We evaluate our method on healthy volunteers and compare the results to manual acquisitions performed by a clinical expert, demonstrating the feasibility of the presented system for AAA screening.

Involved external institutions

Universitätsklinikum Regensburg DE Germany (DE) Technische Universität München (TUM) DE Germany (DE) KUKA Roboter GmbH DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Virga, S., Zettinig, O., Esposito, M., Pfister, K., Frisch, B., Neff, T.,... Hennersperger, C. (2016). Automatic force-compliant robotic Ultrasound screening of abdominal aortic aneurysms. In IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (pp. 508-513). Daejeon, KOR: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc..

MLA:

Virga, Salvatore, et al. "Automatic force-compliant robotic Ultrasound screening of abdominal aortic aneurysms." Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2016, Daejeon, KOR Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2016. 508-513.

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