Development, Safety, and Patient Trust of Autonomous Robotic Medical Ultrasound Diagnostics
type: CreativeWork
description: Medical ultrasound imaging is used as an inexpensive point of care diagnostic tool to visualize anatomy below the surface of the skin. Still, access to ultrasound-trained clinicians is limited, especially in remote medicine and for diagnostic scans, like breast ultrasound. Autonomous robotic ultrasound scans could increase access to this critical diagnostic tool by decreasing the need for expert clinicians to be present to perform scans and increase uniformity in scans collection. For autonomous robotic ultrasound system to be safe and effective it must perform consistently within safe force thresholds and be trusted by patients to do so. First, this thesis addresses the development of a method to develop and perform trajectories consistently on phantom (physically simulated) human arm tissue. This work showed the efficacy of the system to collect, identify, and track vasculature scans precisely within safe force limits. Second, the same procedure is used for a human study with better force sensors, a novel arm restraint device, and a user interface. Participants secured themselves, confirm the procedure to be undertaken, and underwent a effective and safe forearm scan along the arm. Images were determined to be adequate for vasculature identification, which could be used for procedure planning. Participants significantly increased their perception of safety and trust in the robotic procedure from only one interaction with the system. Next a novel, mechanically accurate phantom was developed to tackle a particularly important and difficult surface of the body to traverse, human breast tissue. Finally, the novel custom phantom developed was compared with a commercially available breast phantom to assess the ability to track force effectively and complete the trajectory using the PID controller and trajectory generation of the thesis work. This showed the necessity for mechanically accurate phantoms as the system was more effective on the stiffer commercially availabl…
abstract: Medical ultrasound imaging is used as an inexpensive point of care diagnostic tool to visualize anatomy below the surface of the skin. Still, access to ultrasound-trained clinicians is limited, especially in remote medicine and for diagnostic scans, like breast ultrasound. Autonomous robotic ultrasound scans could increase access to this critical diagnostic tool by decreasing the need for expert clinicians to be present to perform scans and increase uniformity in scans collection. For autonomous robotic ultrasound system to be safe and effective it must perform consistently within safe force thresholds and be trusted by patients to do so. First, this thesis addresses the development of a method to develop and perform trajectories consistently on phantom (physically simulated) human arm tissue. This work showed the efficacy of the system to collect, identify, and track vasculature scans precisely within safe force limits. Second, the same procedure is used for a human study with better force sensors, a novel arm restraint device, and a user interface. Participants secured themselves, confirm the procedure to be undertaken, and underwent a effective and safe forearm scan along the arm. Images were determined to be adequate for vasculature identification, which could be used for procedure planning. Participants significantly increased their perception of safety and trust in the robotic procedure from only one interaction with the system. Next a novel, mechanically accurate phantom was developed to tackle a particularly important and difficult surface of the body to traverse, human breast tissue. Finally, the novel custom phantom developed was compared with a commercially available breast phantom to assess the ability to track force effectively and complete the trajectory using the PID controller and trajectory generation of the thesis work. This showed the necessity for mechanically accurate phantoms as the system was more effective on the stiffer commercially availabl…
author: Oca, Siobhan
keywords: Mechanical engineering
date published: 2022
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:06:59Z
provider: Duke University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Duke University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25759