3D Robotic Ultrasound
For diagnosis and treatment planning in orthopedics, e.g. total knee arthroplasty, 3D imaging is often required. Today’s standard for 3D image acquisition is CT or MRI. Both techniques cause high costs and CT emits harming radiation in addition. In contrast, ultrasound is commonly available at chairside, comes at low costs and does not expose the patient to radiation. Interpretation of ultrasound images however is a difficult task, in particular for volumetric images. Sonographers require years of experience to reliably detect the bone surface.
Fast and accurate diagnosis therefore depends on automated processing. We are investigating the potential of robotic ultrasound scanning. First, the region of interest is acquired by the system and then a planned scan path is followed while maintaining a contact force between the probe and the skin. Challenges include autonomous path planning, robot control strategies and image processing for accurate bone segmentation.
Figure 1: Setup of robotic ultrasound for 3D bone reconstruction in the knee
Figure 2: Fully automatic reconstruction of a distal femur bone from ultrasound: Image slices were segmented by a vision transformer architecture, the segmented partial 3D bone surface was completed using a statistical shape model (SSM).
Publications
- L. Phlippen, B. Hohlmann & K. Radermacher: 3D Reconstruction of Femur using Ultrasound - Hand Guided Evaluation and Autonomous Robotic Approach. In: J.W. Giles (ed.): Proceedings of The 22nd Annual Meeting of the International Society for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery, 6, 2024, pp. 75-81 [DOI: 10.29007/7rr8]
- B. Hohlmann, J. Glanz & K. Radermacher: Segmentation of the distal femur in ultrasound images. Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering, 6(1), 2020, pp. 1-5 [DOI: 10.1515/cdbme-2020-0034]
- B. Hohlmann & K. Radermacher: Augmented Active Shape Model Search – towards 3D Ultrasound-based Bone Surface Reconstruction. In: F. Rodriguez Y Baena & F. Tatti (ed.): CAOS 2020. The 20th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery, 4, 2020, pp. 117-121 [DOI: 10.29007/3px6]
- B. Hohlmann & K. Radermacher: The interleaved partial active shape model (IPASM) search algorithm - towards 3D ultrasound-based bone surface reconstruction. In: P. Meere & F. Rodriguez Y Baena (ed.): CAOS 2019. The 19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery, 3, 2019, pp. 177-180 [DOI: 10.29007/rbgl]
- C. Hänisch, B. Hohlmann & K. Radermacher: The interleaved partial active shape model search (IPASM) algorithm – Preliminary results of a novel approach towards 3D ultrasound-based bone surface reconstruction. In: K. Radermacher & F. Rodriguez Y Baena (ed.): CAOS2017. EPiC Series in Health Sciences, 1, 2017, pp. 399-406