Adaptive image servo controller for robot-assisted diagnostic ultrasound

A robot-assisted system for medical diagnostic ultrasound has been developed by the authors. An ultrasound image servo controller has already been proposed and implemented by Abolmaesumi et al. (2000) to automatically compensate, through robot motions, unwanted motions in the plane of the ultrasound beam. This paper presents an adaptive image servo controller to enhance the performance of the ultrasound image servo controller. To increase safety, the control is shared between the operator and the image controller. The stability and accuracy of the system is illustrated through different experiments.