Ultrasound imaging simulation: Application to the diagnosis of deep venous thromboses of lower limbs

Abstract

This paper describes an ultrasound imaging simulator dedicated to the training of physicians for the detection of deep venous thromboses of the lower limbs. Currently, a lot of pathologies of soft tissue are readily diagnosed using ultrasound imaging. This is the case of deep venous thromboses of the lower limbs. Because this examination is difficult and operator-dependent, developing a simulator is very useful to give common databases of pathological samples on which physicians can both experiment image acquisition and evaluate their understanding of clinical cases. An ultrasound imaging simulator has been developed. An ultrasound volume is constructed from, real images of any typical patient in an off-line pre-processing. Then, simulated images are generated from this volume. The image generation takes into account both the position of the virtual probe and the pressure applied by this probe on the body. Virtual ultrasonic images are generated using a particular interpolation technique and a deformable model of the significant anatomical structures. In most cases, the simulated images are indistinguishable from real ultrasound images.