EPI LAGADIC, IRISA / INRIA Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique, France
At your earliest convenience
20 months
2357 euros (1923 euros free of tax)
This post-doctoral position is part of the research project ANR Contint USComp funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). This three-years project, led by Alexandre Krupa, has started fall 2008. It involves a collaboration with the Visages project-team in Rennes, LSIIT in Strasbourg and LIRMM in Montpellier. Its goal is to provide methodological solutions allowing real-time compensation of the motion of living soft tissues during ultrasound imaging. This motion is mainly due to the breathing and heart beating of the patient.
The proposed approach consists in synchronizing the displacement of a 2D or 3D ultrasound sensor in such a way to stabilize the observed image thanks to a robotized probe holder. This project deals with the complete signal process of the system, including perception of the environment and robot control. Currently, none research work has been made toward this goal whereas applications that need automatic compensation of physiological motion in ultrasound imaging are numerous in the context of medical robotics. The problematic concerns more specially the use in the control scheme of the per-operative ultrasound image, the interaction force between the probe and the soft tissues and the measurements of external signals providing the breathing state of the patient.
The main goal of this post-doc is to propose new visual servoing techniques based on ultrasound images to automatically synchronize the displacement of a robotized ultrasound probe with the soft tissue motion.
In a first time this work will focus on the determination of visual features that can be extracted from live segmented ultrasound images and that are pertinent to perform the robotic task of soft tissue motion stabilization.
The work will then consist in modeling the interaction that links the variation of the retained visual features to the probe displacements.
Then, the activity of this post-doc will be to propose a kinematic control law using the developed interaction model, to move the robot holding the probe in such a way to automatically follow a soft tissue element of interest.
The final aspect of this work will concern the integration of the proposed methods and also the developments performed by the LIRMM and LSIIT partners related to the control part of the robotic system. These developments respectively concern the force control of the robotized probe and the extension of the control with a predictive control scheme using the measurement of physiological signals of the patient for fast motion compensation capability.
The developed methods will be tested and validated on an experimental setup made up of an ultrasound probe embarked on a six degrees of freedom “Hyppocrate” medical robot. In first experiments a six-axis “Adept Viper” robot will also be used to apply simulated physiological motion to ultrasound phantom in order to simulate soft tissue motion. If first results are convincing, experiments on human will be performed using the “Hyppocrate” safe medical robot.
Competences in robotics and in computer vision are strongly required.
Competences in visual servoing, control and image processing are highly recommended.
An excellent practice in C++ programming is also required.
Alexandre Krupa (Alexandre.Krupa@irisa.fr)
Application must include a brief vitae, a letter of candidature and a letter of recommendation.
Application has to be sent by e-mail to alexandre.krupa@irisa.fr
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