Abstract
Diagnostic support systems that substitute ultrasound probe scanning technology by a robot have attracted attention. Ultrasound diagnostic support robot systems realize more precise probe positioning as well as application for tele-echography examination for isolated islands and doctorless villages, automatic inspection by robot alone, and training of inexperienced examiners, etc. Therefore, ultrasound diagnostic support robots for various organs have been developed in many institutions in Japan and abroad. In this paper, I summarize the related research on ultrasound diagnostic support robots and describe the robots that my group has been working on. This study was carried out to realize an emergent medical support robot system that reduces the physical and mental burden of not only patients but also doctors and laboratory technicians. In this paper, we describe a serial link-type robotic echography for a diagnostic and therapeutic system that can cope with lateral position diagnosis. Next, we evaluate the mental rotation ability potentially possessed by physicians and laboratory technicians in ultrasound diagnosis. Analyzing unique techniques used by experts and quantitatively indicating the mental rotation ability will expose problems faced by inexperienced examiners and lead to support for reducing the burden on doctors. Next, with the experimenter cooperating with the robot, an experiment was conducted to calculate an intention estimation matrix that measures the direction and size of the probe scan intended by the inspector. As a result, regardless of the positional relationship between the robot and the experimenter, we succeeded in estimating the intention of the probe scan of the experimenter.
