Intraoperatively Iterative Hough Transform Based In-Plane Hybrid Control of Arterial Robotic Ultrasound for Magnetic Catheterization

This paper presents an intraoperatively iterative Hough transform (IHT) based in-plane hybrid control of extracorporeal ultrasound (US) guided magnetic catheterization for arterial intervention. One uniqueness lies in that both control and tracking of the arterial robotic ultrasound end-effector have been implemented to improve performance. Firstly, the magnetic catheter model and hybrid visual/force servoing control scheme of the extracorporeal ultrasound-integrated tracking arm (EUTA) are derived based on the interaction Jacobian matrix and impedance modeling. Meanwhile, we implement a tracking method of in-plane ultrasound catheter’s tip and detection of vascular boundaries utilizing intensity-level iterative Hough-transform with Iterative End-Ponit Fitting (IEPF). The effectiveness of the proposed control and tracking method has been verified by conducting in vitro experimental studies for catheter steering of a soft tissue-imitating phantom. Results show that an average steering error of 0.56 mm and signal- to-noise-ratio (SNR) of 12.2 are obtained for the ultrasound imaging at high synchronization along with a low target lost rate (15.8%) and constant-force tracking (2.50±1.02 N).