With significant progress being made toward improving endoscope technology such as capsule endoscopy and robotic endoscopy, the development of advanced strategies for manipulating, controlling, and more generally, easing the accessibility of these devices for physicians is an important next step. This article presents an autonomous navigation strategy for use in endoscopy, utilizing a state-dependent region estimation approach to allow for multimodal control design. This region estimator is evaluated for its accuracy in predicting yaw angle of the camera relative to the lumen center, and for estimating the location of the camera based on overall haustra morphology within the colon. To assess the utility of this region estimator, multimodal control is used to allow for autonomous navigation of the Endoculus, a robotic capsule endoscope, within a benchtop, to-scale, simulated colon. The estimation approach is presented and tested, demonstrating successful tracking of fixed velocity rotations at speeds up to $40^\circ$ /s and allowing for curve anticipation approximately 10 cm before entering a curved section of the simulator. Finally, the multimodal control strategy utilizing this estimator is tested within the simulator over a variety of anatomic configurations. This strategy proves successful for navigation in both straight sections of this simulator and in tightly curved sections as small as 8 cm radius of curvature, with average velocities reaching 2.61 cm/s in straight sections and 0.99 cm/s in curved sections.

中文翻译：

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用于自主内窥镜导航的实时状态相关区域估计器

随着胶囊内窥镜和机器人内窥镜等内窥镜技术的改进取得重大进展，开发用于操作、控制以及更广泛地简化这些设备对医生的可及性的高级策略是下一步重要的一步。本文介绍了一种用于内窥镜检查的自主导航策略，利用状态相关区域估计方法来实现多模态控制设计。评估该区域估计器在预测相机相对于管腔中心的偏航角方面的准确性，并根据结肠内的整体 haustra 形态来估计相机的位置。为了评估该区域估计器的效用，使用多模式控制来允许 Endoculus（机器人胶囊内窥镜）的自主导航，在台式，按比例，模拟结肠。提出并测试了估计方法，证明了对固定速度旋转的成功跟踪，速度高达$40^\circ$ /s 并允许在进入模拟器的弯曲部分之前大约 10 厘米处进行曲线预测。最后，使用该估计器的多模态控制策略在模拟器内通过各种解剖结构进行测试。该策略在该模拟器的直线段和曲率半径小至 8 cm 的紧密弯曲段中均证明是成功的，直线段的平均速度达到 2.61 cm/s，弯曲段的平均速度达到 0.99 cm/s。