UltraGelBot: Autonomous Gel Dispenser for Robotic Ultrasound

Abstract: Telerobotic and Autonomous Robotic Ultrasound Systems (RUS) help alleviate the need for operator-dependability in free-hand ultrasound examinations. However, the state-of-the-art RUSs still rely on a human operator to apply the ultrasound gel. The lack of standardization in this process often leads to poor imaging of the scanned region. The reason for this has to do with air-gaps between the probe and the human body. In this paper, we developed a end-of-arm tool for RUS, referred to as UltraGelBot. This bot can autonomously detect and dispense the gel. It uses a deep learning model to detect the gel from images acquired using an on-board camera. A motorized mechanism is also developed, which will use this feedback and dispense the gel. Experiments on phantom revealed that UltraGelBot increases the acquired image quality by $18.6\%$ and reduces the procedure time by $37.2\%$.