  Intraoperative ultrasound imaging is used to facilitate safe brain tumour
resection. However, due to challenges with image interpretation and the
physical scanning, this tool has yet to achieve widespread adoption in
neurosurgery. In this paper, we introduce the components and workflow of a
novel, versatile robotic platform for intraoperative ultrasound tissue scanning
in neurosurgery. An RGB-D camera attached to the robotic arm allows for
automatic object localisation with ArUco markers, and 3D surface reconstruction
as a triangular mesh using the ImFusion Suite software solution. Impedance
controlled guidance of the US probe along arbitrary surfaces, represented as a
mesh, enables collaborative US scanning, i.e., autonomous, teleoperated and
hands-on guided data acquisition. A preliminary experiment evaluates the
suitability of the conceptual workflow and system components for probe landing
on a custom-made soft-tissue phantom. Further assessment in future experiments
will be necessary to prove the effectiveness of the presented platform.
