From Self-Normal-Positioning to Omni-Directional Tracking: Real-Time Surface Modeling Enabled Probe Tilt Control for Robotic Ultrasound Imaging

Freehand 3-D ultrasound (US) imaging has attracted increasing attention owing to its intuitive volumetric visualization, ease of use, and low cost. However, accurate 3-D reconstruction critically depends on stable probe pose estimation, yet existing trackerless methods remain susceptible to accumulated pose errors, particularly over long scanning trajectories. To address this limitation, we propose a global-to-local pose estimation framework that exploits external camera observations for globally stable localization and B-mode US images for anatomy-aware local refinement. Specifically, the framework comprises a dual-camera branch that performs contextual feature aggregation across camera views and temporal observations to estimate a globally consistent probe trajectory, and a B-mode branch that performs anatomical feature aggregation from sequential US images to capture tissue-dependent local motion cues. A cross-modal fusion module subsequently integrates the contextual camera features and anatomical US features to predict pose residuals and refine the camera-derived estimates in the transformation space. Furthermore, a multi-scale pose loss constrains relative motion over multiple temporal horizons to suppress accumulated drift during extended scans. The proposed framework is validated on phantom and in vivo datasets. On two in-house datasets (FUSION-J and FUSION-L) collected using different machines, the proposed US + Dual-Cam model reduces average trajectory drift to 1.67 mm and 1.29 mm, representing improvement of 16.50% and 27.12%, respectively, over a strong dual-camera baseline, while substantially outperforming US-only pose estimation (>13 mm drift). In in vivo forearm arteries reconstruction, it achieves Hausdorff distances of 1.58 mm, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method on real clinical scenarios.

We present an action-conditioned world model framework for goal plane probe guidance in robotic ultrasound, with a focus on neck ultrasound scanning. Autonomous ultrasound tasks often require large numbers of probe-motion trajectories for training, but collecting high-quality demonstrations is labor-intensive and explicit simulators are difficult to build because ultrasound appearance depends on contact, tissue deformation, and view-dependent acoustic artifacts. We address this problem with a two-stage model-based learning pipeline. First, a latent conditional diffusion world model predicts future ultrasound observations from recent context frames, probe motions and temporal offset. Second, a goal-conditioned temporal transformer predicts ordered probe motions and is fine-tuned using rewards from the frozen world model. Experiments on the self-collected dataset show that the world model preserves action-dependent anatomical structure on target-directed scans. In real-world closed loop experiments, the framework achieves success rates of 70.0% for carotid guidance and 65.0% for thyroid guidance. These results demonstrate the potential of learned ultrasound dynamics for training goal-directed robotic probe navigation.

In this paper, we present a robotic ultrasound acquisition system that integrates stereo vision, touch-based feedback, and expert-informed strategies to perform autonomous and adaptive abdominal scans. The system records freehand motion and force data from expert radiologists, creating a framework to capture transducer motion, applied forces, and anatomical scanning strategies. This expert data is replayed to replicate characteristic scans with the robot, forming a foundation for further autonomous capabilities. Using stereo vision, the system generates three-dimensional topography maps of the patient's abdomen, which are refined through stiffness measurements at key points to delineate the rib cage boundary. These combined techniques enable the robot to execute two distinct scanning paths: an upward-angled sweep beneath the rib cage to visualize structures near the upper abdomen and a perpendicular sweep across soft tissue regions. A compliant, torque-controlled seven degree-of-freedom robotic manipulator is controlled to maintain consistent probe contact through closed-loop force control over the varied anatomical surfaces. Physical experiments demonstrate that the system achieves high-quality imaging comparable to expert scans while dynamically adapting to patient-specific topographies. Furthermore, the robotic system surpasses expert capabilities by enabling three-dimensional volume acquisition, which enhances diagnostic potential and provides volumetric data for advanced analyses. This work highlights the integration of expert knowledge into autonomous robotic systems and underscores the potential of combining perception-based autonomy with physical reasoning for enhanced diagnostic performance.