UltraHiT: A Hierarchical Transformer Architecture for Generalizable Internal Carotid Artery Robotic Ultrasonography

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Teng, Jiang, Haojun, Wang, Yuxuan, Sun, Zhenguo, Yan, Xiangjie, Li, Xiang, Huang, Gao
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wang, Teng
Jiang, Haojun
Wang, Yuxuan
Sun, Zhenguo
Yan, Xiangjie
Li, Xiang
Huang, Gao
author_facet Wang, Teng
Jiang, Haojun
Wang, Yuxuan
Sun, Zhenguo
Yan, Xiangjie
Li, Xiang
Huang, Gao
contents Carotid ultrasound is crucial for the assessment of cerebrovascular health, particularly the internal carotid artery (ICA). While previous research has explored automating carotid ultrasound, none has tackled the challenging ICA. This is primarily due to its deep location, tortuous course, and significant individual variations, which greatly increase scanning complexity. To address this, we propose a Hierarchical Transformer-based decision architecture, namely UltraHiT, that integrates high-level variation assessment with low-level action decision. Our motivation stems from conceptualizing individual vascular structures as morphological variations derived from a standard vascular model. The high-level module identifies variation and switches between two low-level modules: an adaptive corrector for variations, or a standard executor for normal cases. Specifically, both the high-level module and the adaptive corrector are implemented as causal transformers that generate predictions based on the historical scanning sequence. To ensure generalizability, we collected the first large-scale ICA scanning dataset comprising 164 trajectories and 72K samples from 28 subjects of both genders. Based on the above innovations, our approach achieves a 95% success rate in locating the ICA on unseen individuals, outperforming baselines and demonstrating its effectiveness. Our code will be released after acceptance.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_13832
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle UltraHiT: A Hierarchical Transformer Architecture for Generalizable Internal Carotid Artery Robotic Ultrasonography
Wang, Teng
Jiang, Haojun
Wang, Yuxuan
Sun, Zhenguo
Yan, Xiangjie
Li, Xiang
Huang, Gao
Robotics
Carotid ultrasound is crucial for the assessment of cerebrovascular health, particularly the internal carotid artery (ICA). While previous research has explored automating carotid ultrasound, none has tackled the challenging ICA. This is primarily due to its deep location, tortuous course, and significant individual variations, which greatly increase scanning complexity. To address this, we propose a Hierarchical Transformer-based decision architecture, namely UltraHiT, that integrates high-level variation assessment with low-level action decision. Our motivation stems from conceptualizing individual vascular structures as morphological variations derived from a standard vascular model. The high-level module identifies variation and switches between two low-level modules: an adaptive corrector for variations, or a standard executor for normal cases. Specifically, both the high-level module and the adaptive corrector are implemented as causal transformers that generate predictions based on the historical scanning sequence. To ensure generalizability, we collected the first large-scale ICA scanning dataset comprising 164 trajectories and 72K samples from 28 subjects of both genders. Based on the above innovations, our approach achieves a 95% success rate in locating the ICA on unseen individuals, outperforming baselines and demonstrating its effectiveness. Our code will be released after acceptance.
title UltraHiT: A Hierarchical Transformer Architecture for Generalizable Internal Carotid Artery Robotic Ultrasonography
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13832