Enhancement of needle tip and shaft from 2D ultrasound using signal transmission maps

Abstract

New methods for needle tip and shaft enhancement in 2D curvilinear ultrasound are proposed. Needle tip enhancement is achieved using an image regularization method that utilizes ultrasound signal transmission maps to model inherent signal loss due to attenuation. Shaft enhancement is achieved by optimizing the proposed signal transmission map using the information based on trajectory constrained boundary statistics derived from phase oriented features. The enhanced tip is automatically localized using spatially distributed image statistics from the estimated shaft trajectory. Validation results from 100 ultrasound images of bovine,porcine,kidney and liver ex vivo reveal a mean localization error of 0.3±0.06 mm,a 43% improvement in localization over previous state of the art.