During auscultation, patients in difficult age often feel embarrassed and uncomfortable when exposing their chests to doctors of the different gender and being touched physically by doctors. We assume that an auscultation with robot technology can address the aforementioned gender-related issue. Toward eliminating gender bias during auscultation exam, this paper proposes a robotic platform which enables to perform the automated auscultation over clothes. Our developed system is comprised of two folds: a depth image-based estimation system of the listening positions over clothes with RGB-D camera and a contact force adjustment system for minimizing the acoustic attenuation due to the clothes with a passive-actuated end-effector. Our preliminary results demonstrated the robotic platform enables to estimate the listening locations to hear the sounds of four cardiac valves over the clothes by combining the estimated skeletal structure with statistical anatomical data and acquire the maximized acoustic quality over the clothes by adjusting the contact force. The developed robotic platform has the potential to address the gender-related issues in auscultation.

Autonomous fetal ultrasonography with a robotic ultrasound (US) can potentially solve the issue of the shortage of ob-gyn physicians in prenatal care. In fetal cardiac diagnosis, acoustic shading derived from the fetal skeleton makes the scanning procedure using a robotic US cumbersome. We hypothesize that fetal bone distribution can be used for determining the fetal position and for subsequently estimating the heart position. This paper serves a method for estimating fetal heart position for autonomous cardiac diagnosis. Our proposed system is comprised of following three processes. First, the fetal bone distribution is generated by following steps: detect shadow areas derived from fetal bones; calculate the three-dimensional (3D) position of the bones; and identify bone types (skull, spine, and others) based on its shadow features. Next, the fetal head position and body axis are estimated based on the generated 3D bone distribution. Finally, the fetal chest position and thoracic sagittal axis of the fetus are estimated based on anatomical structures, and the position of the heart is determined. We validated the proposed method by evaluating the accuracies of bone detection and heart position estimation with three pregnant volunteers. The false positive rate of bone detection is less than 10%, which is sufficient for the proposed method; further, the estimation error for the heart position was within an acceptable error of 15 mm. These results demonstrate the sufficient accuracy of the proposed estimation method and suggest the potential of autonomous fetal cardiac diagnosis using robotic US scanning.

To reduce burdens on obstetricians and pregnant women, we developed a robotic fetal ultrasonography system, which can safely and remotely perform ultrasound scans on pregnant women’s abdomen. However, obstetricians must still control the robot in real time and learning the remote operation is time consuming. To solve this problem, the robot system must be improved to perform automatic ultrasound examination. A technical difficulty is that the robot must recognize the position and angle of the fetus in the uterus. In this study, we propose a fetal position estimation method based on existence probabilities of fetal body parts. The proposed method comprises 1) the classification of different fetal body parts based on the acquired ultrasound images and 2) the estimation of the appropriate position and angel of the probe to allow the robot to automatically collect the three-dimensional volume data of the fetus.

Fine needle insertions into a lung are challenging in terms of the needle deflection due to the breathing motion. Although previous related works neglected the effect for the needle deflection due to the breathing motion by patients stopping the breath during the insertion, they have to suffer from the discomfort. This paper proposes the intermittent insertion control method to decrease needle deflection adapting the lung deformation due to the breathing motion. The novelty of this method is to allow for accurate needle insertion without stopping the breath, which will contribute to decreasing the discomfort and the amount of radiation exposure for patients. The intermittent insertion is to move forward the fine needle during a certain time frame that the needle deflection barely occurs since the lung is not deformed by the diaphragm motion. The feasibility of the proposed method was validated through a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) phantom and ex vivo experiments. The results showed that the deflection can be suppressed up to 1.3 mm and 3.9 mm in the PVC phantom and ex vivo experiments, respectively.

Accurate insertion of fine needles is difficult due to needle deflection. Needle deflection in the lower abdomen is particularly complex, as the needle has to pass through various tissues. As the area of the bowel is dominant in lower abdominal insertion, it is important to analyze the deflection during bowel insertion and to control the needle to minimize deflection. Few studies have focused on bowel insertion. We performed a fundamental deflection analysis of needle insertion in the bowel. Moreover, we have proposed an insertion method for minimizing the needle deflection based on our analysis. First, we performed needle insertion at various insertion positions and insertion angles into the hollow-shaped bowel, and determined the trend of the needle deflection during bowel insertion. The results revealed that the needle deflection was increased due to an increase in insertion angle, and therefore insertion angle should be minimized as much as possible. However, during actual bowel needle insertion, there are many situations in which the ideal path cannot be selected due to the arrangement of the bowel loops. We proposed an insertion method that can eliminate the total needle deflections during bowel insertion by controlling the needle tip direction at the breaching of each bowel wall. The results suggest that the needle deflection can be minimized by selecting the insertion path in which the sum of each insertion angle is zero. We verified the results of this insertion method in multiple bowels in in vivo experiments, and showed that it has the potential to be used in clinical practice.

Since the deceleration of the markets of infrastructures in developed economies occurred, the growing demand for infrastructure development in semi-developed countries has become more outstanding. Semi-developed countries such as Thailand aims to become a developed country. However, it is stuck in 'semi-developed country trap'. To break through this, Thai people need local industries with high-added value. Therefore, we proposed an inversed innovative strategy focusing on railway industry. At first, how railway industry was established so far was investigated for finding keys to establish it. Next, we had field trips so that we can find real needs from Thai people. Actually, many countries compete in Thai railway markets. Thus, a comparison between our proposal and others were made. Our proposal for establishing railway industry includes some steps to get local industry focusing on Thai situation. Finally, it also presents ASEAN market as a future plan after they acquire their local industries.

Recently, due to the deceleration of the markets in developed economies, the growing demand for infrastructure development in emerging countries has become more important in the global economy. Conventionally, developed countries have improved their infrastructure from government's and supplier's viewpoints. However, this approach has not always been the best when working in emerging countries. In this study, we propose an innovative approach inspired by the concept of social innovation, centered around the social viewpoint. It consists of a system for the successful implementation and sustainable development of new infrastructure projects in emerging countries. We focus on an ongoing railway project in Vietnam by looking at the applicability of this concept there. Finally, the concept is evaluated through rounds of discussion with experts from the government, academia and industry. It was concluded that the project is perceived to have great potential for the region, and it is regarded with high esteem by all stakeholders.