A Real-time Interactive 3D Ultrasound Imaging System

Real-time 3D ultrasound (US) imaging has attracted more attention since it can display spatial 3D images of tissues and organs in real time to provide important information for diagnosis and intervention. In this study, Bezier interpolation and PNN reconstruction algorithms are combined to achieve real-time repeatable 3D reconstruction. A real-time interactive 3D US imaging system with a 2DB-mode probe is developed. The system employs an optical measuring equipment to collect six degrees of freedom (6-DoF) poses of the US probe. 2D US image acquisition using a calibrated probe with the pose information is performed to reconstruct a 3D volume. A multi-thread scheme is proposed to achieve real-time data acquisition, overlapped 3D reconstruction and volume visualization. Interactive functions and image segmentation enable users to freely select regions of interest (ROI) and adjust image color and opacity. The system was evaluated on a 3D printing femur model, a neck phantom and human carotid arteries. The surface point clouds segmented from the reconstructed 3D volumes were rigidly registered with the models whose CT scans were available. The surface matching error was used as the reconstruction error. The 3D volumes were reconstructed with different voxel sizes of (0.5 mm, 1.0 mm, 1.5 mm). The reconstruction errors of the femur and trachea model were (0.85 mm, 0.99 mm, 1.43 mm) and (0.96 mm, 1.17 mm, 1.37 mm), respectively. The 3D reconstruction on real human carotid arteries has confirmed the clinical feasibility.