Stable Targeting Assistance for Ultrasound-Based Instrument Guidance

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Transcutaneous ultrasound imaging is becoming an increasingly widespread tool across a wide range of clinical specialties, partly encouraged or even mandated by federal guidelines. However, the imaging skill and manual dexterity necessary to perform these procedures is not easy to acquire, and pose a significant challenge to efficient and effective procedures for many clinicians. The proposed project aims to improve the ease of use and the effectiveness of interventional ultrasound by providing a novel feedback method that will assist operators to maintain correct probe and needle pose relative to a clinical target. The proposed method is a form of image stabilization, and relies on the development of on- probe optical tracking of probe motion relative to the patient body, as well as subsurface tracking of a clinical target in ultrasound images. By combining these two information sources, an estimate of the optimal probe movement to maintain the target in view can be computed. Feedback to the user can then be delivered through auditory or visual channels, but importantly also through a novel haptic feedback mechanism that will be developed and tested in this project. A successful outcome will substantially increase the availability of such procedures by allowing a wide range of clinicians of all skill levels achieve satisfying results in terms of accuracy and speed. Our work during this Phase II project will be in close collaboration with anesthesiologists who represent a prime user group for our improved feedback system. They and other clinicians will provide design inputs at the beginning and throughout the proposed work. We expect to develop a pre-market prototype and to distribute this system to a wider range of physicians in the course of the project.