Robotic versus Human Teleoperation for Remote Ultrasound

TL;DR

This study compares robotic and human teleoperation methods for remote ultrasound, finding that human teleoperation is more practical and provides more consistent force application without sacrificing accuracy or speed.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental comparison of robotic versus human teleoperation for ultrasound, highlighting practical advantages of human teleoperation.

Findings

Human teleoperation has similar completion time to robotic methods.

Force application is more consistent in human teleoperation.

Human teleoperation is more practical and accessible.

Abstract

Diagnostic medical ultrasound is widely used, safe, and relatively low cost but requires a high degree of expertise to acquire and interpret the images. Personnel with this expertise are often not available outside of larger cities, leading to difficult, costly travel and long wait times for rural populations. To address this issue, tele-ultrasound techniques are being developed, including robotic teleoperation and recently human teleoperation, in which a novice user is remotely guided in a hand-over-hand manner through mixed reality to perform an ultrasound exam. These methods have not been compared, and their relative strengths are unknown. Human teleoperation may be more practical than robotics for small communities due to its lower cost and complexity, but this is only relevant if the performance is comparable. This paper therefore evaluates the differences between human and robotic teleoperation, examining practical aspects such as setup time and flexibility and experimentally comparing performance metrics such as completion time, position tracking, and force consistency. It is found that human teleoperation does not lead to statistically significant differences in completion time or position accuracy, with mean differences of 1.8% and 0.5%, respectively, and provides more consistent force application despite being substantially more practical and accessible.