面向经胸远程超声的自动初始探头放置方法
Towards Automated Initial Probe Placement in Transthoracic Teleultrasound Using Human Mesh and Skeleton Recovery
AI总结：
本文提出了一种基于RGB图像的远程超声自动初始探头放置方法，通过混合现实设备捕捉患者并重建体表模型，从而实现精确的探头位置指导。
摘要：
心脏和肺部超声技术具有挑战性，因为操作者必须识别患者特定的肋间声窗，然后通过调整探头位置、旋转和力度在不同成像平面之间导航。这些挑战在远程超声中更加突出，当新手或机器人面临没有现场专家协助的情况下，必须首先将探头放在患者身上。我们提出了一种框架，仅使用校准相机的RGB图像，通过混合现实（MR）头戴式显示器（HMD）上的相机捕捉患者，然后在边缘服务器上推断出患者特定的体表和骨骼模型，并在多个视图上进行空间平滑处理。利用骨骼预测的骨性标志物，我们估计了肋间区域，并将指导投射到重建的体表上。为了验证该框架，我们重叠了重建的体表网格和虚拟探头姿态指导，在多个经胸超声心动图扫描平面中进行现场测试，并测量了定量放置误差。初步实验表明，所提出的探头放置预测和MR指导在解剖变异范围内实现了一致的初始放置，适用于远程超声设置。
英文摘要：
Cardiac and lung ultrasound are technically demanding because operators must identify patient-specific intercostal acoustic windows and then navigate between standard views by adjusting probe position, rotation, and force across different imaging planes. These challenges are amplified in teleultrasound, where the examination proceeds without in-person expert assistance: once the probe is approximately positioned, the expert can navigate in ultrasound image space, but guiding the initial placement remotely remains difficult given the limited 3D perception of the patient. We present a framework for automating patient registration and anatomy-informed initial probe placement guidance (PIPG) using RGB images obtained from a calibrated camera and a point cloud accumulated from depth images. The novice first captures the patient using the camera on a mixed reality (MR) head-mounted display (HMD), and an edge server then infers a patient-specific body-surface and skeleton model. By leveraging the patient's spatial and temporal consistency across multiview and point cloud data, we achieved robust, training-free human registration, verified in a healthcare setting. Using bony landmarks from the predicted skeleton, we estimate the intercostal region and project the guidance back onto the reconstructed body surface. To validate the framework, we rendered the reconstructed body mesh and the virtual probe pose guidance in the MR headset across multiple transthoracic echocardiography scan planes in situ and measured the quantitative placement error. Pilot experiments with five healthy volunteers suggest that the proposed probe placement prediction and MR guidance yield consistent initial placement, with a mean surface error of 15 mm, positional error to palpated anatomical landmarks of 41.0 mm, and torso orientation errors within 9 deg, acceptable for the teleultrasound setup.
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