Intraoperative ultrasound imaging is used to facilitate safe brain tumour resection. However, due to challenges with image interpretation and the physical scanning, this tool has yet to achieve widespread adoption in neurosurgery. In this paper, we introduce the components and workflow of a novel, versatile robotic platform for intraoperative ultrasound tissue scanning in neurosurgery. An RGB-D camera attached to the robotic arm allows for automatic object localisation with ArUco markers, and 3D surface reconstruction as a triangular mesh using the ImFusion Suite software solution. Impedance controlled guidance of the US probe along arbitrary surfaces, represented as a mesh, enables collaborative US scanning, i.e., autonomous, teleoperated and hands-on guided data acquisition. A preliminary experiment evaluates the suitability of the conceptual workflow and system components for probe landing on a custom-made soft-tissue phantom. Further assessment in future experiments will be necessary to prove the effectiveness of the presented platform.

翻译：术中超声成像用于促进安全脑肿瘤切除。然而，由于图像判读和物理扫描方面的挑战，该工具在神经外科领域尚未获得广泛应用。本文介绍了一种用于神经外科术中超声组织扫描的新型多功能机器人平台的组件与工作流程。安装在机械臂上的RGB-D摄像头可通过ArUco标记实现自动目标定位，并利用ImFusion Suite软件解决方案进行三角网格形式的3D表面重建。基于网格表示的任意曲面上超声探头的阻抗控制引导，实现了协同超声扫描，即自主、遥操作和手把手引导的数据采集。初步实验评估了概念工作流程和系统组件在定制软组织体模上进行探头着陆的适用性。未来实验中的进一步评估将有必要验证所提出平台的有效性。