A mechatronic tele-operated system for echography using visual navigation assistance and a model based bilateral predictive control

This paper presents a tele-operated medical robotic system to perform tele-echography at a distance for the benefit of sites with reduced medical facilities. When performing the tele-echography act, medical experts require feedback information from the remote slave side. In this case, both image and force information is needed to render the distant environment of the robot. To efficiently control the remote system, the medical specialist analyses in almost real time ultrasound image extracted characteristics using fuzzy and fractal approaches; with the benefit of force feedback and appropriate predictive control proposed here to negotiate intrinsic communication time delays, the expert is able to accurately position the distant end-effector holding a real ultrasound probe to the desired searched organ for a quality ultrasound slice.