System and method for five plus one degree-of-freedom (dof) motion tracking and visualization

A method for manipulating a remote ultrasound imaging system comprising:

• providing a hand-held device having three first sensors to detect angular orientation of the device in three planes,
• providing a two-dimensional surface of a personal computer table or laptop laid flat on a fixed counter or tabletop, said surface having two second sensors to detect translational position of the hand-held device in two directions,
• displaying an image on said surface taken from the remote ultrasound imaging system,
• providing a pressure sensor on or in the hand-held device to communicate compression data to the remote device,
• communicating the angular orientation data and compression data from the hand-held device and the translational position data from the surface device to a remote host that controls the position and angular orientation of the remote device,
• using the compression data to calculate translational position data in a dimension approximately orthogonal to the translational position data from the surface device, and
• positioning a remote ultrasound imaging device based on the angular orientation data and pressure data from the hand-held device and the translational position data from the surface device.