Sarcopenia Detection System Using RGB-D Camera and Ultrasound Probe: System Development and Preclinical In-Vitro Test

Sarcopenia is defined as muscle mass and strength loss with aging. As places, such as South Korea, Japan, and Europe have entered an aged society, sarcopenia is attracting global attention with elderly health. However, only few developed devices can quantify sarcopenia diagnosis modalities. Thus, the authors developed a sarcopenia detection system with 4 degrees of freedom to scan the human thigh with ultrasound probe and determine whether he/she has sarcopenia by inspecting the length of muscle thickness in the thigh by ultrasound image. To accurately measure the muscle thickness, the ultrasound probe attached to the sarcopenia detection system, must be moved angularly along the convex surface of the thigh with predefined pressure maintained. Therefore, the authors proposed an angular thigh scanning method for the aforementioned reason. The method first curve-fits the angular surface of the subject's thigh with piecewise arcs using D information from a fixed RGB-D camera. Then, it incorporates a Jacobian-based ultrasound probe moving method to move the ultrasound probe along the curve-fitted arc and maintains radial interface force between the probe and the surface by force feedback control. The proposed method was validated by in-vitro test with a human thigh mimicked ham-gelatin phantom. The result showed the ham tissue thickness was maintained within approximately 26.01 ± 1.0 mm during 82° scanning with a 2.5 N radial force setting and the radial force between probe and surface of the phantom was maintained within 2.50 ± 0.1 N.