Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 03, 2023 - September 06, 2023
Ultrasound (echo) guidance has been recognized as a standard practice for needle insertions to increase the safety and certainty of vascular access calculation in hemodialysis treatments. Nevertheless, its manual operation requires training and proficiency due to difficulties in adjusting the echo probe and needle to catch the correct identification of their spatial relationship from the two-dimensional cross-sectional images. This manuscript proposes an assistive technology for ultrasound-guided puncture by attaching a miniature inertial sensor unit (accelerometer and magnetometer) on both the needle and the probe. The method includes three-dimensional posture calculations to track needle orientation relative to the probe imaging direction. It also employed image processing to detect and track a needle coordinate of intersectional points in the ultrasound image utilizing optical flow algorithms. An optical motion capture system was used simultaneously for the validation study. The primary experiment in which clinical expertise punctured the skin-vessel model successfully showed the expected needle pass overlaying ultrasound image.
