Improving Probe Localization for Freehand 3D Ultrasound Using Lightweight Cameras

Ultrasound (US) probe localization relative to the examined subject is essential for freehand 3D US imaging, which offers significant clinical value due to its affordability and unrestricted field of view. However, existing methods often rely on expensive tracking systems or bulky probes, while recent US image-based deep learning methods suffer from accumulated errors during probe maneuvering. To address these challenges, this study proposes a versatile, cost-effective probe pose localization method for freehand 3D US imaging, utilizing two lightweight cameras. To eliminate accumulated errors during US scans, we introduce PoseNet, which directly predicts the probe's 6 D pose relative to a preset world coordinate system based on camera observations. We first jointly train pose and camera image encoders based on pairs of 6 D pose and camera observations densely sampled in simulation. This will encourage each pair of probe pose and its corresponding camera observation to share the same representation in latent space. To ensure the two encoders handle unseen images and poses effectively, we incorporate a triplet loss that enforces smaller differences in latent features between nearby poses compared to distant ones. Then, the pose decoder uses the latent representation of the camera images to predict the probe's 6 D pose. To bridge the sim-to-real gap, in the real world, we use the trained image encoder and pose decoder for initial predictions, followed by an additional MLP layer to refine the estimated pose, improving accuracy. The results obtained from an arm phantom demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which notably surpasses state-of-the-art techniques, achieving average positional and rotational errors of 2.03 mm and 0.37°, respectively. Code:https://github.com/dianyeHuang/FreehandUS_Pose_Estimation