Abstract
Among various medical problems facing us in today's Japan are rapidly aging society, localization of medical doctors, concentrated visits of patients to large hospitals, etc. Development of diagnostic and treatment support systems is considered a solution to a pressing problem to help reduce loads on medical doctors. On other hand, actual diagnosis should be holding a Probe at same position for a long time. So, we have developed the ReDAT (Robotic-echography for Diagnostic and Treatment support system) to be able to diagnose by cooperative operation. This system realizes a coordinated motion according to the motion of the probe, which is held by the robot and is moved by a physician. The system recognizes when the physician grasps the ultrasound probe by 6-axis force sensor and touches it on body surface by processing echograms. As the results, this system has the potential to be able to support advanced diagnosis for conventional echography.
