Operator-dependent
Diagnostic views need trained hands: pose, pressure, acoustic window, parameters. Without an expert on shift, the scanner sits idle.
AURA
AI acquires. Physicians diagnose.
AURA is a Portuguese autonomous ultrasound platform: a custom probe and imaging engine, a force-controlled robotic arm, computer vision and clinical AI in one product. It acquires standardised examinations without an expert sonographer holding the probe. Diagnosis stays with the physician.
AURA does not replace the physician. This site does not claim MDR certification, CE marking, or measured clinical performance. Product figures are visualisations; final industrial design may differ. Orders and lead times: research@nwpt.pt.
Owning a scanner is not ultrasound capacity
Unequal access
Primary-care, regional and mobile sites rarely staff a specialist operator at all times. Patients wait, travel, or go without.
Variable quality
Exam quality follows whoever holds the probe. AURA attacks the acquisition bottleneck: capture is standardised and distributed; interpretation can stay centralised.
Autonomous acquisition, diagnostic quality
One integrated product under a single Portuguese design authority — not a robot bolted onto a third-party scanner.
Fully autonomous acquisition
From patient detection to protocol completion.
SonoAI
Anatomy recognition and standard-view planning in real time.
SafeProbe
Compliant contact, closed-loop force, validated limits.
Image-quality assessment
The system judges its own output before storing it.
Clinical protocols
Renal first; bladder, thyroid, vascular and lung next.
DICOM and PACS-ready
A structured study with quality metadata for physician review.
From patient to structured study
- 01
Position
Vision identifies the patient, body orientation and target region.
- 02
Approach and contact
The robot moves under workspace, velocity and collision limits. SafeProbe establishes compliant contact.
- 03
Recognise anatomy
SonoAI detects the organ and estimates whether the plane matches the required clinical view.
- 04
Optimise in a loop
Navigator adjusts position, tilt and force while the imaging engine tunes depth, gain and focus.
- 05
Assess and complete
Quality is scored. Views, measurements and metadata export as DICOM.
Every step ends in one of three explicit states
ACCEPT
The view meets the criteria and is stored.
RETRY
The view is inadequate; the system searches again.
ESCALATE
Persistent failure is handed to a human.
Closed-loop diagnostic-quality acquisition
Ultrasound, robot pose, contact force and body vision feed a multimodal estimator. AURA does not merely move a probe or classify an image: it decides whether the exam has reached the acquisition endpoint.
Joint optimisation
Physical state (pose, force) and imaging state (depth, gain, focus, frequency) are tuned together.
Failure-aware autonomy
A low-quality view is never silently counted as a completed exam.
Safety separated from AI
AI proposes motion. The safety layer decides whether it is allowed.
AI proposes. Independent layers decide.
Every autonomous action is logged. The design aims at ISO 13485 and EU MDR; this site does not claim certification or measured clinical performance.
Software limits
Force, velocity, workspace, collision detection.
Supervision
Watchdog, safe-state transitions, full action logging.
Independent force sensing
Hardware measurement off the AI path.
Mechanical safety
Passive compliance, hard stops, emergency stop, rapid probe retraction.
AURA Renal — first protocol
A clinically meaningful protocol with a bounded engineering and regulatory problem. It proves the full stack and opens the path to more organs.
- 01Locate the right kidney
- 02Longitudinal and transverse
- 03Measure renal length
- 04Repeat the left kidney
- 05Verify and export
One platform, many organs
- Renal · phase 1
- Bladder · phase 2
- Thyroid · phase 3
- Vascular · phase 4
- Lung · phase 5
- Abdominal · phase 5+
Built from zero to one hundred at NWPT
In-house design and build. Electronics purchased. Portuguese architecture, IP, software, integration and verification.
AURA Probe
Mechanics, housing, acoustic-stack integration, assembly and calibration. Transducer elements purchased.
Ultrasound engine
TX/RX board, FPGA/GPU beamforming, real-time control firmware.
Robotics
Kinematics, structure, motion planning and joint control.
SafeProbe
Compliant end-effector, force loop, emergency retraction.
Vision and compute
Patient localisation, calibration, perception, enclosure integration.
SonoAI and software
Anatomy, Navigator, quality, protocol engine, DICOM, cybersecurity and logging.
AURA does not replace the physician. This site does not claim MDR certification, CE marking, or measured clinical performance. Product figures are visualisations; final industrial design may differ. Orders and lead times: research@nwpt.pt.
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