McDonald-Bowyer, A;
Syer, T;
Retter, A;
Stoyanov, D;
Stilli, A;
(2024)
Autonomous control of an ultrasound probe for intra-operative ultrasonography using vision-based shape sensing of pneumatically attachable flexible rails.
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery
10.1007/s11548-024-03178-z.
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Abstract
Purpose: In robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery, surgeons often use intra-operative ultrasound to visualise endophytic structures and localise resection margins. This must be performed by a highly skilled surgeon. Automating this subtask may reduce the cognitive load for the surgeon and improve patient outcomes. Methods: We demonstrate vision-based shape sensing of the pneumatically attachable flexible (PAF) rail by using colour-dependent image segmentation. The shape-sensing framework is evaluated on known curves ranging from r=30 to r=110 mm, replicating curvatures in a human kidney. The shape sensing is then used to inform path planning of a collaborative robot arm paired with an intra-operative ultrasound probe. We execute 15 autonomous ultrasound scans of a tumour-embedded kidney phantom and retrieve viable ultrasound images, as well as seven freehand ultrasound scans for comparison. Results: The vision-based sensor is shown to have comparable sensing accuracy with FBGS-based systems. We find the RMSE of the vision-based shape sensing of the PAF rail compared with ground truth to be 0.4975±0.4169 mm. The ultrasound images acquired by the robot and by the human were evaluated by two independent clinicians. The median score across all criteria for both readers was ‘3—good’ for human and ‘4—very good’ for robot. Conclusion: We have proposed a framework for autonomous intra-operative US scanning using vision-based shape sensing to inform path planning. Ultrasound images were evaluated by clinicians for sharpness of image, clarity of structures visible, and contrast of solid and fluid areas. Clinicians evaluated that robot-acquired images were superior to human-acquired images in all metrics. Future work will translate the framework to a da Vinci surgical robot.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Autonomous control of an ultrasound probe for intra-operative ultrasonography using vision-based shape sensing of pneumatically attachable flexible rails |
| Location: | Germany |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11548-024-03178-z |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11548-024-03178-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Intra-operative ultrasound, Medical robotics, Robotic-assisted surgery, Shape sensing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Medicine UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Med Phys and Biomedical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10193075 |
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