Remote control of a robotic prosthesis arm with six-degree-of-freedom for ultrasonic scanning and three-dimensional imaging

Robotic ultrasound systems have turned into clinical use over the past decades, increasing precision and quality of medical operations. In this paper, we propose a robot-assisted and tele-controlled ultrasound scanning system for three-dimensional imaging. A six degree-of-freedom (DOF) robot arm acting as an upper-limb prosthesis remotely controlled by an operator drove the ultrasound probe to scan the skin surfaces. Via internet, the operator in a distant place monitored the robotic prosthesis and the patient through four video cameras on-site. According to the real-time video streams, the operator could manipulate a joystick for sending instructions from the remote operating terminal to the system on the patient side to adjust the probe motions. In this way, the safety and accuracy of the proposed system could be guaranteed. During the probe scanning, the acquired B-scans and their positional data were transferred to the remote workstation for the subsequent volume reconstruction and visualization. In-vitro and in-vivo experiments were conducted to validate the feasibility and performance of the proposed system. The quantitative experimental results show that the error for volume measurement was less than 1.1%, indicating that our system could accurately and flexibly control the probe scanning and produce 3D ultrasound images with high quality.