OTELO European Project

mObile Tele-Echography using an ultra-Light rObot

P. Vieyres

Laboratoire Vision et Robotique – University of Orléans

The OTELO project proposes the study and development of a fully integrated end-to-end mobile tele-echography system for population groups that are either temporarily or permanently not served locally by medical experts. The main drawback of current ultrasound techniques is that the quality of the examination highly depends on the operator’s specialized skills which are lacking in most healthcare centers. OTELO is a dedicated and portable ultrasound probe holder robotic system with 6 degree of freedom, associated with existing and new mobile communications technologies, and state of the art image compression techniques. Its goal is to reproduce the expert's hand movements during an ultrasound examination performed on a patient being located at a distance from the medical expert. The light robotic system, located at the patient site, is positioned on the patient by a non specialized medical assistant according to the medical expert information using a videoconferencing link. From the expert site, the ultrasound specialist controls the remote robotic probe holder using a dedicated fictive probe and according to the ultrasound images he receives from the patient site. This new system will give the medical expert relevant information for him to perform a preventive diagnosis and avoid unnecessary transportation of the patient back and forth to the clinical expert center, and also bring medical expertise to remotely located population groups.