Full-Coverage Path Planning and Stable Interaction Control for Automated Robotic Breast Ultrasound Scanning

Ultrasound examination is widely used for diagnosis of breast cancer, which requires a full-coverage scan of the whole organ and stable probe–breast interaction for high-quality image acquisition. In this study, a robotic system for automated breast ultrasound scanning is proposed. To avoid occlusion, point cloud of the breast is obtained from multiple angles and registered together for accurate tissue shape reconstruction, then scan path planning is performed with isometric 3-D point cloud searching algorithm for full and uniform coverage. To reduce the adverse influence of large tissue deformation during ultrasound scanning, a contact force–strain regression model is built for tissue deformation estimation and used as a feedforward to correct the planned scanning path, and a probe–tissue interaction model with scanning resistance is built for normal probe orientation adjustment. To maintain normal probe orientation and stable contact force during robotic ultrasound scanning, a hybrid force–velocity control framework is proposed based on admittance control algorithm. Experiment results show that the robotic system can successfully maintain a constant contact force and keep the probe's posture along the normal orientation of probe–breast interaction both in in-plane direction and out-of-plane direction.