EAGER: Development of an Advanced Haptic Display for Medical Imaging

这个渴望的项目将创建一个创新的系统，允许医疗专业人员使用他们的触觉来探索从超声成像扫描中获得的数据。医生在体检时经常依靠触诊，用手和手指探索器官或身体部分的大小、位置和机械反应。由复杂的成像系统产生的高分辨率三维图像是现代医学中必不可少的工具；该项目的结果将使诊断医生能够交互地触摸、感觉和操纵这些图像中的对象。该项目需要将最近开发的超声成像方法与手套状界面相结合，该界面将使用气动执行器来准确模拟成像组织的机械响应。该项目将通过及早和准确地检测癌症肿瘤，并减少不必要的侵入性活检，使公众健康受益。异常生长的机械特性可能是确定其是否为癌症的重要因素。结合声速测量(与体积模数相关)和弹性成像(与剪切模数相关)，可以估计成像区域中每个点的局部弹性张量。这个项目将为手和手指创造一种气动触觉设备，它使用这些数据来准确地模拟身体触觉的感觉。这种数据显示模式模拟了身体检查的过程，因此自然利用基本的医学培训，而不是需要新的、反直觉的技能来解释人工可视化。该项目将确定将这种触觉反馈添加到现有的诊断扫描中是否会带来更好的诊断结果。EARGER项目将包括对该设备传递软组织机械特性中细微的和诊断相关的差异的能力进行广泛评估。

This EAGER project will create an innovative system to allow medical professionals to use their sense of touch to explore data obtained from ultrasound imaging scans. Physicians routinely rely on palpation during physical examination, exploring the size, location, and mechanical response of organs or body parts with their hands and fingers. The high-resolution, three-dimensional images produced by sophisticated imaging systems are essential tools in modern medicine; the results of this project will enable diagnosticians to interactively touch, feel, and manipulate objects in these images. The project entails the integration of a recently developed ultrasonic imaging methods with a glove-like interface that will use pneumatic actuators to accurately simulate the mechanical response of the imaged tissue. The project will benefit public health through early and accurate detection of cancerous tumors, and reduction of unnecessary, invasive biopsies.The mechanical properties of an abnormal growth may be important in determining whether it is cancerous. Combining speed-of-sound measurement, which correlates to bulk modulus, and elastography, which correlates to shear modulus, allows estimation of the local elasticity tensor at each point in the imaged region. This project will create a pneumatically actuated haptic device for the hands and fingers, that uses this data to accurately simulate the feel of physical palpation. This mode of data display emulates the process of physical examination, and is thereby naturally leverages basic medical training, rather than requiring new, counter-intuitive, skills to interpret an artificial visualization. The project will establish whether adding this haptic feedback to existing diagnostic scans will lead to better diagnostic outcomes. The EAGER project will include extensive evaluation of the ability of the device to convey subtle and diagnostically relevant differences in the mechanical properties of soft tissue.