Sensorless reconstruction of freehand 3D ultrasound data

Abstract

Freehand 3D ultrasound can be acquired without a position sensor by finding the separations of pairs of frames using information in the images themselves. Previous work has not considered how to reconstruct entirely freehand data, which can exhibit irregularly spaced frames, non-monotonic out-of-plane probe motion and significant in-plane motion. This paper presents reconstruction methods that overcome these limitations and are able to robustly reconstruct freehand data. The methods are assessed on freehand data sets and compared to reconstructions obtained using a position sensor. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.