A master thesis from Aalborg University
A first step to enhance the robot-patient interaction in a Robot Assisted Ultrasound system
Author(s)
Term
4. semester
Education
Publication year
2024
Submitted on
2024-05-31
Pages
78 pages
Abstract
The physical discomfort when manoeuvring the transducer in an ultrasound scan device brings Hera, a Robot Assisted Ultrasound system developed by Life Science Robotics to aid in obstetric scans. It consists of a robot arm that holds the transducer while controlled by the sonographer via a joystick. No published approach considered the other side of the human-robot interaction, the robot-patient interaction to enhance the patient's comfort. The project aims to provide a starting point to detect patient movement and provide a robot-patient interaction. The proposed approach consists of developing and testing a Kernelized Correlation Filter that keeps tracking the patient's abdomen under the presence of the robot in view by correcting the tracking box with feature-matching techniques. The approach is on average 9\% more accurate than the default tracker when occlusion is present on the frame. It can also re-identify the patient in long tracking sequences after losing the target due to a big occlusion, reaching an accuracy of 84.5\% compared to the default 69,4\%. Scanning the upper part of the abdomen fails in detecting points in the region of interest. Moreover, textureless clothing leads to wrong matches since the points are detected at the skin-clothes boundary. In spite, the approach can potentially track the abdomen to determine the real-time position of the patient and enhance the interaction with the robot, but further research is needed to detect more robust features and handle occluded areas.
Documents
Colophon: This page is part of the AAU Student Projects portal, which is run by Aalborg University. Here, you can find and download publicly available bachelor's theses and master's projects from across the university dating from 2008 onwards. Student projects from before 2008 are available in printed form at Aalborg University Library.
If you have any questions about AAU Student Projects or the research registration, dissemination and analysis at Aalborg University, please feel free to contact the VBN team. You can also find more information in the AAU Student Projects FAQs.