# DopUS-Net: Quality-Aware Robotic Ultrasound Imaging based on Doppler Signal

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.08938 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08938/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Empirical Evaluation of Gated Recurrent Neural Networks on Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.3555/) (2014)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Mixed Precision Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03740/) (2017)
- [Generalised Dice overlap as a deep learning loss function for highly unbalanced segmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.03237/) (2017)
- [Delving Deeper into Convolutional Networks for Learning Video Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06432/) (2015)
- [Optimizing the Dice Score and Jaccard Index for Medical Image Segmentation: Theory & Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.01685/) (2019)
- [Towards MRI-Based Autonomous Robotic US Acquisitions: A First Feasibility Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08371/) (2016)
- [Autonomous Robotic Screening of Tubular Structures based only on Real-Time Ultrasound Imaging Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00099/) (2020)
- [Y-Net: A Spatiospectral Dual-Encoder Networkfor Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07613/) (2022)
- [MI-SegNet: Mutual Information-Based US Segmentation for Unseen Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12649/) (2023)
- [Mutual Information-based Disentangled Neural Networks for Classifying Unseen Categories in Different Domains: Application to Fetal Ultrasound Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00739/) (2020)
- [VesNet-RL: Simulation-based Reinforcement Learning for Real-World US Probe Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06676/) (2022)
- [Towards Autonomous Atlas-based Ultrasound Acquisitions in Presence of Articulated Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05399/) (2022)
- [Motion-Aware Robotic 3D Ultrasound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05998/) (2021)
- [Precise Repositioning of Robotic Ultrasound: Improving Registration-based Motion Compensation using Ultrasound Confidence Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05383/) (2022)
- [Spherical Interpolated Convolutional Network with Distance-Feature Density for 3D Semantic Segmentation of Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13784/) (2020)
- [Adaptive Polar Active Contour for Segmentation and Tracking in Ultrasound Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07195/) (2018)
- [Automatic ultrasound vessel segmentation with deep spatiotemporal context learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02461/) (2021)
- [Good and Bad Boundaries in Ultrasound Compounding: Preserving Anatomic Boundaries While Suppressing Artifacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11962/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Motion Magnification in Robotic Sonography: Enabling Pulsation-Aware Artery Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03698/) (2023)
- [Robot-Assisted Deep Venous Thrombosis Ultrasound Examination using Virtual Fixture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02539/) (2024)
- [Learning Autonomous Ultrasound via Latent Task Representation and Robotic Skills Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13323/) (2023)
- [UltraG-Ray: Physics-Based Gaussian Ray Casting for Novel Ultrasound View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29022/) (2026)
- [US-VLA: An Ultrasound Vision-Language-Action Model for Embodied Abdomina](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16074/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medical ultrasound (US) is widely used to evaluate and stage vascular diseases, in particular for the preliminary screening program, due to the advantage of being radiation-free. However, automatic segmentation of small tubular structures (e.g., the ulnar artery) from cross-sectional US images is still challenging. To address this challenge, this paper proposes the DopUS-Net and a vessel re-identification module that leverage the Doppler effect to enhance the final segmentation result. Firstly, the DopUS-Net combines the Doppler images with B-mode images to increase the segmentation accuracy and robustness of small blood vessels. It incorporates two encoders to exploit the maximum potential of the Doppler signal and recurrent neural network modules to preserve sequential information. Input to the first encoder is a two-channel duplex image representing the combination of the grey-scale Doppler and B-mode images to ensure anatomical spatial correctness. The second encoder operates on the pure Doppler images to provide a region proposal. Secondly, benefiting from the Doppler signal, this work first introduces an online artery re-identification module to qualitatively evaluate the real-time segmentation results and automatically optimize the probe pose for enhanced Doppler images. This quality-aware module enables the closed-loop control of robotic screening to further improve the confidence and robustness of image segmentation. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach with the re-identification process can significantly improve the accuracy and robustness of the segmentation results (dice score: from 0:54 to 0:86; intersection over union: from 0:47 to 0:78).