Controlling the Trajectory of a Flexible Ultrathin Endoscope for Fully Automated Bladder Surveillance
Abstract
During cystoscopy, the urologist manually steers a cyst scope inside a patient's bladder to visually inspect the inner surface. Cystoscopies are performed as part of surveillance for bladder cancer, making it the most expensive cancer to treat over a patient's lifetime. An automated bladder scanning system has been devised to reduce workload and cost by relieving the urologist from performing surveillance. Presented here is a proof-of-concept apparatus that controls the motion of a miniature flexible endoscope. Image-based feedback is used to adjust the endoscope's movement so that captured images overlap with one another, ensuring that the entire inner surface of the bladder is imaged. Within a bladder phantom, the apparatus adaptively created and followed a spherical scan pattern comprised of 13 individual latitudes and 508 captured images, while accepting between 60% and 90% image overlap between adjacent images. The elapsed time and number of captured images were sensitive to the apparatus's placement within the phantom and the acceptable image overlap percentage range. A mosaic of captured images was generated to validate comprehensive surveillance. Overall, a robotically controlled endoscope used in conjunction with image-based feedback may permit fully automated and comprehensive bladder surveillance to be conducted without direct clinician oversight.
Additional Information
© 2013 IEEE. Manuscript received November 15, 2011; revised July 28, 2012; accepted December 8, 2012. Date of publication January 30, 2013; date of current version January 17, 2014. Recommended by Technical Editor Z. Zhu. This work was supported by the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) under Grant NPRP 09-214-2-090 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The authors would like to acknowledge the Human Photonics Laboratory's R. Johnston and D. Melville for developing and providing assistance with the SFE system. They would also like to thank M. P. Porter for contributing his clinical perspective to this work. The statements made herein are solely the responsibilities of the authors.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 43923
- DOI
- 10.1109/TMECH.2013.2237783
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140221-094525754
- NPRP 09-214-2-090
- Qatar National Research Fund National Priorities Research Program (NPRP)
- Created
-
2014-02-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Other Numbering System Name
- INSPEC Accession Number
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 14032773