Xing-Yu Chen;Wenjie Lai;Xiaohui Xiong;Xuemiao Wang;Shi-Mei Wang;Peng Li;Weiyi Han;Yangyang Du;Wenke Duan;Wenjing Du;Soo Jay Phee;Lei Wang
{"title":"Robotic Bronchoscopy System With Variable-Stiffness Catheter for Pulmonary Lesion Biopsy","authors":"Xing-Yu Chen;Wenjie Lai;Xiaohui Xiong;Xuemiao Wang;Shi-Mei Wang;Peng Li;Weiyi Han;Yangyang Du;Wenke Duan;Wenjing Du;Soo Jay Phee;Lei Wang","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527655","url":null,"abstract":"Bronchoscopy is a minimally invasive and effective method for early lung cancer diagnosis. Traditional bronchoscopy faces challenges such as limited dexterity, operator fatigue, and difficulty in maintaining steady manipulation. Existing robot-assisted methods have deficiencies, such as tool instability due to the dynamic respiratory environment. This paper presents a teleoperated robotic bronchoscopy system, featuring a controllable variable-stiffness catheter that enhances stability and flexibility during transbronchial biopsies. The 7 DoF robotic system allows for translation, rotation, and bending of the bronchoscope; delivery and bending of the catheter; delivery and control of biopsy tools; as well as stiffness adjustment of the catheter, which adapts to the dynamic pulmonary environment to provide stable support during tissue sampling. Key contributions include the robotic platform integrated with the variable-stiffness catheter and the implementation of a novel three-stage procedure for tissue sampling. The robotic system has been thoroughly evaluated through a series of tests, including the system accuracy, characterization of the variable-stiffness catheter’s flexibility, force exertion, safety during operation, temperature control, and in-vivo experiment. The results demonstrated the system’s feasibility and effectiveness, with metrics such as safe force limits, system flexibility, and positioning accuracy, showing its potential to improve the accuracy and safety of traditional bronchoscopy procedures.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"416-427"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Qianwen Zhao;Rajarshi Roy;Chad Spurlock;Kevin Lister;Long Wang
{"title":"A High-Fidelity Simulation Framework for Grasping Stability Analysis in Human Casualty Manipulation","authors":"Qianwen Zhao;Rajarshi Roy;Chad Spurlock;Kevin Lister;Long Wang","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527687","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, there has been a growing interest in rescue robots due to their vital role in addressing emergency scenarios and providing crucial assistance in challenging or hazardous situations where human intervention is problematic. However, very few of these robots are capable of actively engaging with humans and undertaking physical manipulation tasks. This limitation is largely attributed to the absence of tools that can realistically simulate physical interactions, especially the contact mechanisms between a robotic gripper and a human body. In this study, we aim to address key limitations in current developments towards robotic casualty manipulation. Firstly, we present an integrative simulation framework for casualty manipulation. We adapt a finite element method (FEM) tool into the grasping and manipulation scenario, and the developed framework can provide accurate biomechanical reactions resulting from manipulation. Secondly, we conduct a detailed assessment of grasping stability during casualty grasping and manipulation simulations. To validate the necessity and superior performance of the proposed high-fidelity simulation framework, we conducted a qualitative and quantitative comparison of grasping stability analyses between the proposed framework and the state-of-the-art multi-body physics simulations. Through these efforts, we have taken the first step towards a feasible solution for robotic casualty manipulation.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"281-289"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Novel Deployable and Stiffness-Variable Homecare Hyper-Redundant Robot Based on the Origami Mechanism","authors":"Zhenhua Gong;Guangpu Zhu;Ting Zhang","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527713","url":null,"abstract":"The advantages of hyper-redundant robots lie in their natural flexibility and large deformation, as well as their passive adaptive ability, which shows great potential in medical and nursing applications. However, this feature also makes them weak in scalability and load capacity, making it difficult to complete fine care operations and daily grasping tasks. In this paper, a large deploy/fold ratio variable stiffness hyper-redundant robot based on the origami principle is proposed, which has a large deploy/fold ratio, and realizes large stiffness change based on the bionic muscle-driven variable stiffness principle. Based on the analysis of origami theory, the robot uses rigid origami mechanisms as the skeleton support, flexible gasbags as the backbones, and the hybrid actuation is used to realize the extension, contraction, variable stiffness, and omnidirectional bending motion. Based on the motion/stiffness model of the hyper-redundant robot, the characteristics of the single-joint and the 6-joint hyper-redundant robot are verified by experiments. These experiments confirm that the hyper-redundant robot has a large deploy/fold and variable stiffness range, obtains a large bending deformation and working range, can overcome the gravity generated by itself and the load, and has a high load capacity.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"66-76"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143529896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nevena Musikic;Douglas B. Chepeha;Milos R. Popovic
{"title":"Surface Electromyography-Based Speech Detection Amid False Triggers for Artificial Voice Systems in Laryngectomy Patients","authors":"Nevena Musikic;Douglas B. Chepeha;Milos R. Popovic","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527685","url":null,"abstract":"Laryngectomy, a surgical intervention for laryngeal cancer, effectively treats the condition but results in the loss of natural speech. Voice restoration post-laryngectomy typically involves manual control, limiting patients’ ability to multitask while speaking. Surface electromyography (sEMG) offers a hands-free alternative for controlling artificial voice systems. However, challenges arise from daily, orofacial activities like chewing or coughing, activating the same muscles used for sEMG control, potentially causing false triggers. To address this, we perform a detailed analysis of facial and neck muscles during speech and non-speech activities to identify potential false triggers for sEMG-controlled artificial voice systems. We propose a five-step algorithm to prepare noisy sEMG data for analysis and to detect accurate speech onset and termination times within the muscle activity. A two-stage classification approach is suggested to effectively distinguish speech from non-speech activities. The classifier in the first stage detects the presence of any activity versus non-activity with an F1-score of 95.8%, while the classifier in the second stage recognizes speech among other activities with an F1-score of 96.3%. This research marks a significant advancement in differentiating speech from other daily activities, thereby minimizing false triggers in sEMG-controlled artificial voice systems.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"404-415"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ultrasound-Based Human Machine Interfaces for Hand Gesture Recognition: A Scoping Review and Future Direction","authors":"Keshi He","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3522502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3522502","url":null,"abstract":"Since ultrasound signal is firstly used to build a human machine interface (HMI) for prosthetic control in 2006, ultrasound-based HMIs have received the great attention in the past 18 years. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive overview of every aspect of an ultrasound-based HMI for hand gesture recognition (HGR). Firstly, I introduce the principle of ultrasound-based HGR and then outline a workflow for an ultrasound-based HMI for HGR and detail each step involved in the workflow, followed by an introduction of performance evaluation and robustness of this type of HMI. Then, I review the research progress of ultrasound-based HMIs for HGR. After that, I introduce the state-of-the-art wearable ultrasound systems for HMIs. Furthermore, I summarize the miscellaneous application of ultrasound-based HMIs for HGR. Finally, I discuss the main research challenges and further envision future research directions for ultrasound-based HMIs for HGR.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"200-212"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Development of a Reconfigurable 7-DOF Upper Limb Rehabilitation Exoskeleton With Gravity Compensation Based on DMP","authors":"Qingcong Wu;Linliang Zheng;Yanghui Zhu;Zihan Xu;Qiang Zhang;Hongtao Wu","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517157","url":null,"abstract":"With the development of society, the aging population and the number of stroke patients are increasing year by year. Rehabilitation exoskeletons can help patients carry out rehabilitation training and improve their activities of daily living. First, this paper designs a reconfigurable exoskeleton for upper limb rehabilitation. Second, the working space and singular configuration of the exoskeleton are analyzed. Then, Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMP) and sliding mode control are combined to form a new control strategy. Additionally, by changing the working mode of the gravity compensation device and different control methods, the control experiment of the exoskeleton is carried out. The advantages of sliding mode control under combinational reaching law (CRL-SMC) are verified. The influence of the gravity compensation device on motor driving torque and energy consumption is also analyzed. Finally, experimental results show that compared with sliding mode control under power reaching law (PRL-SMC) and PID control, CRL-SMC has better control performance in single joint trajectory tracking and end trajectory tracking, improving control performance by at least 60%. In the best case, the gravity compensation device can reduce the energy consumption by 81.90% and the maximum motor current by 69.25% of the driving element.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"303-314"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shuai Zhang;Liang Zhao;Shoudong Huang;Evangelos B. Mazomenos;Danail Stoyanov
{"title":"Direct Camera-Only Bundle Adjustment for 3-D Textured Colon Surface Reconstruction Based on Pre-Operative Model","authors":"Shuai Zhang;Liang Zhao;Shoudong Huang;Evangelos B. Mazomenos;Danail Stoyanov","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517168","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing textured colon surface maps using a sequence of monocular colonoscopic images together with a 3D colon mesh model that has been segmented in CT colonography. The problem is formulated as a direct bundle adjustment (BA) problem which simultaneously optimizes all camera poses and the intensity of vertices on the pre-operative mesh model. This optimization is achieved by maximizing photometric consistency among multiple views of 2D images and the pre-operative 3D mesh model. The key properties of our proposed direct BA formulation involve eliminating the need for reference image specification, data association (feature extraction and matching), and image depth information. Thus, the proposed method is particularly suitable for scenarios where distinct features and image depth are not available, such as 2D colonoscopic images. Furthermore, we have proven that solving the proposed direct BA using the Gauss-Newton (GN) algorithm has the merit of optimizing camera poses only, which is equivalent to optimizing camera poses and the intensities of 3D vertices on the mesh together. Thus, a direct camera-only BA algorithm is proposed and used for 3D textured colon reconstruction from textureless 2D colonoscopic images. Validations using simulation, phantom, and in-vivo datasets are performed to demonstrate the accuracy and feasibility of the proposed algorithm.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"242-253"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Human Control of Underactuated Objects: Adaptation to Uncertain Nonlinear Dynamics Ensures Stability","authors":"Rakshith Lokesh;Dagmar Sternad","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517172","url":null,"abstract":"Humans frequently interact with objects that have dynamic complexity, like a cup of coffee. Such systems are nonlinear and underactuated, potentially creating unstable dynamics. Instabilities generate complex interaction forces that render the system unpredictable. And yet, humans interact with these objects with ease. Nonlinear dynamic analysis shows that the initial conditions and frequencies of input forces determine the system’s stability. Taking inspiration from carrying a cup of coffee, participants rhythmically moved a cup with a ball rolling inside which was modeled as a cart-pendulum system. They were encouraged to prepare the cup-and-ball system by ‘jiggling’ the cup before moving it back and forth on a horizontal line. We tested the hypothesis that humans initialize the system and choose interaction frequencies that stabilize their interactions. To create uncertainty about the specific cup-and-ball system, the pendulum length was varied without providing cues to the participant. Stability was quantified by variability of relative phase between cup and ball. Results showed that participants nonlinearly co-varied the initial ball angle at the end of preparation and the cup frequency during the rhythmic phase. Mapping participants’ choices onto the highly nonlinear manifold of stable solutions generated by forward-simulations verified that they indeed achieved stable solutions.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"6-12"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143529872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wanqing Wang;Fucheng Liu;Jianxiong Hao;Xiangyang Yu;Bo Zhang;Chaoyang Shi
{"title":"Desmoking of the Endoscopic Surgery Images Based on a Local-Global U-Shaped Transformer Model","authors":"Wanqing Wang;Fucheng Liu;Jianxiong Hao;Xiangyang Yu;Bo Zhang;Chaoyang Shi","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517139","url":null,"abstract":"In robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS), the smoke generated by energy-based surgical instruments blurs and obstructs the endoscopic surgical field, which increases the difficulty and risk of robotic surgery. However, current desmoking research primarily focuses on natural weather conditions, with limited studies addressing desmoking techniques for endoscopic images. Furthermore, surgical smoke presents a notably intricate morphology, and research efforts aimed at uniform, non-uniform, thin, and dense smoke remain relatively limited. This work proposes a Local-Global U-Shaped Transformer Model (LGUformer) based on the U-Net and Transformer architectures to remove complex smoke from endoscopic images. By introducing a local-global multi-head self-attention mechanism and multi-scale depthwise convolution, the proposed model enhances the inference capability. An enhanced feature map fusion method improves the quality of reconstructed images. The improved modules enable efficient handling of variable smoke while generating superior-quality images. Through desmoking experiments on synthetic and real smoke images, the LGUformer model demonstrated superior performance compared with seven other desmoking models in terms of accuracy, clarity, absence of distortion, and robustness. A task-based surgical instrument segmentation experiment indicated the potential of this model as a pre-processing step in visual tasks. Finally, an ablation study was conducted to verify the advantages of the proposed modules.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"254-265"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143521564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Human-in-the-Loop Optimization for Terrain- and User-Adaptive Gait Phase Estimation in Phase-Portrait-Based Methods","authors":"Tian Ye;Ali Reza Manzoori;Auke Ijspeert;Mohamed Bouri","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2024.3517136","url":null,"abstract":"Gait phase (GP) estimation is a critical component in control of exoskeletons and prostheses, enabling seamless user interaction in various controllers. In recent years, methods based on machine learning and sensor fusion have offered advances in GP estimation, but their high computational costs and reliance on training and numerous sensors present practical challenges. Estimation methods using phase variables, such as phase-portrait-based methods, can circumvent these drawbacks. However, their lower accuracy has limited their application. To address this limitation, we introduce a novel human-in-the-loop (HIL) optimization approach for improving the accuracy of GP estimation in phase-portrait-based methods. The approach is based on geometric manipulation of the phase portraits with linear transformations, which are adapted online by employing Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES). The performance of this adaptive method (termed AM) is compared against using a fixed transformation (FM) at different walking speeds on level and inclined treadmill. The results demonstrate the superior performance of AM in all tested conditions in terms of accuracy and linearity, with an average RMS error of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$1.97 pm 0.20%$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Convergence times for one round of optimization on a low-end single-board computer were less than 11 s on average. This study confirms the potential of leveraging HIL optimization for enhancing the performance of phase-portrait-based methods to reach accuracy levels comparable to more complex state-of-the-art methods.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"94-99"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143529875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}