Abstract
Ultrasound is widely applied to clinical purpose as Echography and High-intensity focused ultrasound for ablation therapy. Also, we have studied micro bubble control in blood vessel using ultrasound for acoustic targeted drug delivery. These techniques require accurate position control of therapeutic ultrasound field based on ultrasound image information. Therefore, we proposed a robotic system to control a position of an ultrasound transducer for therapy based on ultrasound image information. The system consists of an ultrasound probe for image-capturing, an ultrasound transducer, a robot with the therapeutic transducer, positioning software and an optical tracking device to integrate the coordinates. The system enables the transducer follows to a US imaging probe based on a therapeutic plan. In this study, positioning and following control accuracy was evaluated. The results demonstrate the system has a potential for targeting the transducer based on intra-operative planning.
