  Purpose: Intra-Cardiac Echocardiography (ICE) is a powerful imaging modality
for guiding cardiac electrophysiology and structural heart interventions. ICE
provides real-time observation of anatomy and devices, while enabling direct
monitoring of potential complications. In single operator settings, the
physician needs to switch back-and-forth between the ICE catheter and therapy
device, making continuous ICE support impossible. Two operators setup are
therefore sometimes implemented, with the challenge of increase room occupation
and cost. Two operator setups are sometimes implemented, but increase
procedural costs and room occupation.
  Methods: ICE catheter robotic control system is developed with automated
catheter tip repositioning (i.e. view recovery) method, which can reproduce
important views previously navigated to and saved by the user. The performance
of the proposed method is demonstrated and evaluated in a combination of heart
phantom and animal experiments.
  Results: Automated ICE view recovery achieved catheter tip position accuracy
of 2.09 +/-0.90 mm and catheter image orientation accuracy of 3.93 +/- 2.07
degree in animal studies, and 0.67 +/- 0.79 mm and 0.37 +/- 0.19 degree in
heart phantom studies, respectively. Our proposed method is also successfully
used during transeptal puncture in animals without complications, showing the
possibility for fluoro-less transeptal puncture with ICE catheter robot.
  Conclusion: Robotic ICE imaging has the potential to provide precise and
reproducible anatomical views, which can reduce overall execution time, labor
burden of procedures, and x-ray usage for a range of cardiac procedures.
Keywords: Automated View Recovery, Path Planning, Intra-cardiac
echocardiography (ICE), Catheter, Tendon-driven manipulator, Cardiac Imaging
