title: A Cooperatively Controlled Robot for Ultrasound Monitoring of Radiation Therapy.
abstract: Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) involves two main procedures, performed in different rooms on different days: (1) treatment planning in the simulator room on the first day, and (2) radiotherapy in the linear accelerator room over multiple subsequent days. Both the simulator and the linear accelerator include CT imaging capabilities, which enables both treatment planning and reproducible patient setup, but does not provide good soft tissue contrast or allow monitoring of the target during treatment. We propose a cooperatively-controlled robot to reproducibly position an ultrasound (US) probe on the patient during simulation and treatment, thereby improving soft tissue visualization and allowing real-time monitoring of the target. A key goal of the robotic system is to produce consistent tissue deformations for both CT and US imaging, which simplifies registration of these two modalities. This paper presents the robotic system design and describes a novel control algorithm that employs virtual springs to implement guidance virtual fixtures during "hands on" cooperative control.
authors.affiliation: H. Tutkun Şen, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell and Peter Kazanzides are with the Dept. of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tutkun Şen
authors.affiliation: H. Tutkun Şen, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell and Peter Kazanzides are with the Dept. of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Muyinatu A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Lediju Bell
authors.affiliation: Iulian Iordachita is with the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD USA iordachita@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Iulian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Iordachita
authors.affiliation: John Wong is with the Dept. of Radiation Oncology, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD USA jwong35@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: H. Tutkun Şen, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell and Peter Kazanzides are with the Dept. of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kazanzides
references.citation: Med Image Anal. 1999 Sep;3(3):285-300
references.pmid: 10710297
references.citation: Med Image Anal. 2008 Oct;12 (5):535-45
references.pmid: 18650122
references.citation: Int J Med Robot. 2008 Dec;4(4):321-30
references.pmid: 18803337
references.citation: Med Phys. 2010 Dec;37(12 ):6357-67
references.pmid: 21302793