Automatic palpation for quantitative ultrasound elastography by visual servoing and force control

The precise location of tumors is an important step in surgical planning that can be obtained from mechanical properties of soft tissues. In this paper we propose a robotic-assisted palpation system that automatically moves an ultrasound probe to optimize the elastography process and improve the resulting elastogram. The main contribution of this work is the use of the elastography modality directly as input of the robot controller. Force measures are also considered in the probe control in order to automatically induce soft tissue deformation needed for real-time elastography imaging process. Moreover, an automatic exploration process is implemented to orient the probe to reach different views of a soft tissue target of interest. This allows to improve the elastogram quality of the element of interest by fusing the information observed from different positions.