title: Enabling technologies for robot assisted ultrasound tomography.
abstract: Currently available ultrasound (US) tomography systems suggest utilizing cylindrical transducers that can be used for a specific organ. In this paper, our focus is on an alternative way of creating US tomographic images that could be used for other anatomies and more general applications. This system consists of two conventional US probes facing each other while one or several of the transducers in one probe can act as the transmitter and the rest as the receiver. Aligning the two US probes is a challenging task. To address this issue, we propose a robot assisted US tomography system in which one probe is operated freehanded and another by a robotic arm. In this paper, enabling technologies for this system are described. With the current prototype, a reconstruction precision of 4.12, 1.73, and 2.23 mm for the three calibrations, and an overall alignment repeatability in the range of 5-9 mm were achieved. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Electrical & Computer Eng. Dept., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Fereshteh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Aalamifar
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Mechanical Eng. Dept., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Rishabh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Khurana
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Computer Science., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Electrical & Computer Eng. Dept., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaoyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Mechanical Eng. Dept., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Iulian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Iordachita
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Electrical & Computer Eng. Dept., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.|Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Computer Science., 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.|Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Radiology, 601 North Caroline Street., Baltimore, MD, 21287, USA.
authors.forename: Emad M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Boctor
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002138:Calibration; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D065287:Robotic Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D012984:Software; D014054:Tomography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D014159:Transducers; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
keywords: hand-eye calibration; robotic ultrasound; ultrasound calibration; ultrasound tomography