A Force Feedback Remote Ultrasound Service

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A Force Feedback Remote Ultrasound Service
P. Thorel France Télécom R D Grenoble, France
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Origin Objectives

• E-Health Services
• Public health / Country Planning
• Telemedicine Homecare, Remote diagnosis, Remote
  examination, Remote surgery
• Improvement of healthcare supply organisations
• Promotion of
• collaborative working
• proficiency networks

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The French panorama

• 39  level 3  services in general hospitals
• 300  level 2  medical centres
• 2500  level 1  medical studies

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Organisation

• 2 complementary teams at France Télécom RD
• Development of telemedicine services prototypes
• Research on haptic interfaces and tele-gesture
• External partners
• Universities robot control
• Industrials making of robot device
• Medical staff clinical validation

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Architecture of the service

• Point to point service linking
• a  patient  site Patient medical personnel,
  video, robot, US device
• an  expert  site Medical expert, visio, haptic
  device, image visualisation
• Different Flows and constraints
• Informal communication Audio/video
• Diagnosis Medical images
• Robot control and gesture Haptic data

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How does it work
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Flow Management
 expert  site
 patient  site

• Integration of all the flows on one hardware
  platform
• Handling of the requirements specific to each
  flow (delays, rates, priority)
• Handling of the necessary dependency between
  flows (synchronisation)
• Modularity -gt ISDN, ADSL, ATM, GPRS, UMTS

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Transmission of Touch

• use of robotics for robot tele-operation and
  haptic for rendering the force exerted by the
  robot.
• The transport of the gesture data allows an
  immersion even more complete and realistic for
  distant manipulators.
• The haptic command station preserves medical
  expert proprioception and gesture feelings

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Networks

• Validation on several  smart  network
  configurations

ISDN

ISDN
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Challenges Innovation

• 5 patents
• Exact gesture transmission
• Synchronisation of heterogenous flows
• Generic module for remote virtual reality
• Wide openning
• Equipments peripherals, robots
• Telecommunication networks
• Simultaneous innovation Uses Services
• France Télécom RD Innovation Awards

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Other Applications

• Proprioceptive telemedicine
• Tele-expertise
• Isolated sites, Medical Urgency
• Nano surgery
• Remote surgery
• Networking games
• Industrial remote handling
• E-learning for gesture

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Illustration