Medical Robotics for Ultrasound Imaging: Current Systems and Future Trends

This review provides an overview of the most recent robotic ultrasound systems that have contemporary emerged over the past five years, highlighting their status and future directions. The systems are categorized based on their level of robot autonomy (LORA). Teleoperating systems show the highest level of technical maturity. Collaborative assisting and autonomous systems are still in the research phase, with a focus on ultrasound image processing and force adaptation strategies. However, missing key factors are clinical studies and appropriate safety strategies. Future research will likely focus on artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality to improve image understanding and ergonomics. A review on robotic ultrasound systems is presented in which first technical specifications are outlined. Hereafter, the literature of the past five years is subdivided into teleoperation, collaborative assistance, or autonomous systems based on LORA. Finally, future trends for robotic ultrasound systems are reviewed with a focus on artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Current Robotics Reports

• Publication date

  2021-02-22

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s43154-020-00037-yPMID 34977593PMCID 7898497
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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