A robotic holder of transcranial doppler probe for CBFV auto-searching

The operational difficulty of Transcranial Doppler (TCD) limits its use in normal clinical settings. We therefore present a robotic arm consists of five degrees of freedom which are achieved by four motors and one extra flexible spring, to assure appropriate pressure on temporal window. With proper control strategies, the robotic arm can move the TCD probe to automatically search temporal window positions. In this paper, we have developed the first full-automatic ambulatory TCD system, evaluated its reliability and efficiency after many experiments. In view of the validation of the instrument in successful experiments, this probe holder is likely to have great impact on future TCD examination.