Use of a Smartphone as Virtual Probe for Medical Ultrasound Training: Six Degrees of Freedom Tracking with ARCore

Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) controllers are usually expensive and/or complex to set up. A smartphone as 6DoF controller could be a cost-effective and simple alternative. Within the scope of this research, the application context of medical ultrasound training is addressed, in which the smartphone could be used to control a virtual probe. For this purpose, the difference in rotation and position tracking has been examined between an HTC Vive Tracker as an established reference system and a smartphone using ARCore. Additionally, the usability of the smartphone for controlling a virtual ultrasound probe has been qualitatively evaluated by nine subjects using a simplified test system. ARCore s 6DoF tracking is generally less reliable and accurate than the HTC Vive tracker. However, both the characteristics of the measured tracking errors and the qualitative evaluation show that an ARCore-based 6DoF tracking can be used as a simple and acceptable solution for controlling a virtual ultrasound probe.