Design and Prototyping of a Handheld 3-DOF Laparoscopic Ultrasound Manipulator for Liver Surgery

Laparoscopic ultrasound offers noninvasive, real-time, and low-cost intraoperative monitoring of the intra-abdominal organs. However, because of the lack of degrees of freedom in the positioning of the laparoscopic ultrasound probe, it is difficult to align an ultrasound imaging plane with the longitudinal section of a blood vessel in the liver. This paper proposes a handheld laparoscopic ultrasound manipulator with three degrees of freedom...