Development of a Remote Ultrasound Imaging System

In this paper, concept of developing a haptic tele-robotic master-slave manipulators for ultrasound imaging examination, and some preliminary results will be presented. In a tele-ultrasound system the motion of a master manipulator (such as a haptic wand or a simple joystick) which carries a virtual probe is controlled by a medical expert and remotely reproduced at the patient site by a slave robot, carrying the ultrasound probe. In general a remote diagnostic system contains three divisions: expert station (or expert site), patient station (or patient site), and a communication network such as servers Wi-Fi or satellite network. The experiments demonstrate that the slave manipulator is capable of successfully following the motion of a master manipulator in a path following as well as for point-to-point motions.