超音波診断支援ロボットによる医師のプローブ走査再現システムの構築

抄録

Echography is an imaging diagnostic method that has advantages of low cost, minimally invasive, real time, compactness, and simplicity. It is indispensable equipment in every medical field but examination with echography greatly depends on the expertise and experience of an operator. In this study, we propose a new robotic-echography support system (Echography Assisted Robotics, EARs) using a robotic platform ROS (Robot Operating System).In this paper, we constructed an echography environment with ROS and reproduced the movement of the ultrasound probe with a robot. We also conducted experiments to measure and reproduce the probe scanning trajectory, and compared the acquired echogram. As a result of our experiments, we succeeded in acquiring echogram by using EARs, but there were cases where the EARs could not handle the motion of the patient’s body surface, resulting in different diagnostic images.