  Maternal health remains a pervasive challenge in developing and
underdeveloped countries. Inadequate access to basic antenatal Ultrasound (US)
examinations, limited resources such as primary health services and
infrastructure, and lack of skilled healthcare professionals are the major
concerns. To improve the quality of maternal care, robot-assisted antenatal US
systems with teleoperable and autonomous capabilities were introduced. However,
the existing teleoperation systems rely on standard video stream-based
approaches that are constrained by limited immersion and scene awareness. Also,
there is no prior work on autonomous antenatal robotic US systems that automate
standardized scanning protocols. To that end, this paper introduces a novel
Virtual Reality (VR) platform for robotic antenatal ultrasound, which enables
sonologists to control a robotic arm over a wired network. The effectiveness of
the system is enhanced by providing a reconstructed 3D view of the environment
and immersing the user in a VR space. Also, the system facilitates a better
understanding of the anatomical surfaces to perform pragmatic scans using 3D
models. Further, the proposed robotic system also has autonomous capabilities;
under the supervision of the sonologist, it can perform the standard six-step
approach for obstetric US scanning recommended by the ISUOG. Using a 23-week
fetal phantom, the proposed system was demonstrated to technology and academia
experts at MEDICA 2022 as a part of the KUKA Innovation Award. The positive
feedback from them supports the feasibility of the system. It also gave an
insight into the improvisations to be carried out to make it a clinically
viable system.
