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：术中超声成像用于辅助安全切除脑肿瘤。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得到广泛应用。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及其组件与工作流程。安装在机械臂上的RGB-D摄像头利用ArUco标记实现自动目标定位，并通过ImFusion Suite软件方案生成三角网格形式的3D表面重建。基于阻抗控制引导超声探头沿任意曲面（以网格形式表示）移动，可实现协作式超声扫描（即自主、远程操作及手把手引导的数据采集）。初步实验评估了该概念性工作流程及系统组件在定制软组织仿体上进行探头着陆的适用性。未来实验需进一步评估，以验证所提平台的有效性。