3D ultrasound image reconstruction from non-uniform resolution freehand slices

The reconstruction of 3D ultrasound (US) images from mechanically registered but otherwise irregularly positioned B-scan slices is of great interest in image guided therapy procedures, such as that used for the treatment of prostate cancer. The conventional reconstruction method simply interpolates slices from the same angle and then compounds the interpolated data from different angles. This method results in spatial resolution far inferior to the in-plane resolution of each B-scan slice. We propose a novel reconstruction method which properly weights the frequency components of data sets from different angles in a Wiener filter/MMSE fashion. Simulation results for synthetic US images are presented to demonstrate the excellent reconstruction.