Co-robotic synthetic tracked aperture ultrasound (STRATUS) system

Synthetic aperture is a signal processing technique used to increase image resolution by synthesizing information from multiple subapertures, but the resolution improvement is limited by the physical size of the array transducer. Our co-robotic approach extends the effective aperture size by providing accurate tracking information and force-control compensation in a rapid execution.This concept can be applied in both 2D and 3D ultrasound/PA imaging for resolution and contrast enhancement together with field-of-view extension. Figure 2A shows STRATUS images through 2D scanning of an ultrasound phantom. Leveraging the smart tools research thrust, we extended this approach from a conventional US array to tracked single element needle ultrasound for lumbar puncture guidance (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Synthetic tracked aperture ultrasound imaging. (A) Co-robotic STRATUS imaging approach shows resolution enhancement compared to single pose conventional B-mode. (B) Extending STRATUS approach from 1D array in (A) to a single element tracked needle for lumbar guidance.

Publications

Zhang HK, Bottenus N, Cheng A, Guo X, Trahey GE, Boctor EM. Synthetic tracked aperture ultrasound (STrAtUS) imaging: design, simulation, and experimental evaluation. J Med Imaging. 2016;3(2):027001.
Zhang HK, Kim Y, Lin M, Paredes M, Kannan K, Moghekar A, Durr NJ, Boctor EM. Toward dynamic lumbar puncture guidance using needle-based single-element ultrasound imaging. J Med Imaging (Bellingham). 2018;5(2):021224.