IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2024 Jan;71(1):77-88. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2023.3292336. Epub 2023 Dec 22.
Conventional colonoscopy using a flexible colonoscope remains two major limitations, including patient discomfort and difficult manipulations for surgeons. Robotic colonoscopes have been developed to conduct colonoscopy in a patient-friendly manner. However, most robotic colonoscopes still maintain nonintuitive and difficult manipulations, which limits their clinical applications. In this paper, we demonstrated visual servo-based semi-autonomous manipulations of an electromagnetic actuated soft-tethered (EAST) colonoscope, which aims to lower difficulties of robotic colonoscope manipulations.
Kinematic modeling of EAST colonoscope is conducted, with an adaptive visual servo controller established. Template matching method and a lumen and polyp detection model are developed to enable semi-autonomous manipulations, including region-of-interest automatic tracking and autonomous navigation with automatic polyp detection.
The EAST colonoscope demonstrates visual servoing with an average convergence time of around 2.5 s and performs disturbance rejection within 3.0 s. Semi-autonomous manipulations were conducted in both a commercialized colonoscopy simulator and an ex-vivo porcine colon to show the efficacy of reducing the user workload compared to manual control.
The EAST colonoscope can perform visual servoing and semi-autonomous manipulations with the developed methods in both laboratory and ex-vivo environments.
The proposed solutions and techniques improve the autonomy level of robotic colonoscopes and reduce user workloads, which promotes the development and clinical translation of robotic colonoscopy.
传统的柔性结肠镜检查仍然存在两个主要局限性，包括患者不适和外科医生操作困难。为了以患者友好的方式进行结肠镜检查，已经开发了机器人结肠镜。然而，大多数机器人结肠镜仍然保持非直观和难以操作，这限制了它们的临床应用。在本文中，我们展示了基于视觉伺服的电磁驱动软索（EAST）结肠镜的半自动操作，旨在降低机器人结肠镜操作的难度。
对 EAST 结肠镜进行运动学建模，并建立自适应视觉伺服控制器。开发模板匹配方法和管腔和息肉检测模型，以实现半自动操作，包括感兴趣区域的自动跟踪和具有自动息肉检测的自主导航。
EAST 结肠镜的视觉伺服平均收敛时间约为 2.5 秒，在 3.0 秒内进行干扰抑制。在商业化的结肠镜模拟器和离体猪结肠中进行了半自动操作，与手动控制相比，显示出降低用户工作量的效果。
在实验室和离体环境中，所提出的方法可用于 EAST 结肠镜进行视觉伺服和半自动操作。
所提出的解决方案和技术提高了机器人结肠镜的自主性水平并降低了用户工作量，这促进了机器人结肠镜的发展和临床转化。
