3D Freehand Ultrasound Reconstruction Based on Probe Trajectory - Sofware Tulipe

Contact : Pierrick Coupé, Pierre Hellier, Christian Barillot

Incorporation of Probe Trajectory

3D freehand ultrasound imaging produces a set of non parallel B-scans which are irregularly distributed in the space. Reconstruction amounts to computing a regular lattice volume and is needed to apply conventional computer vision algorithms like registration. We propose a new 3D reconstruction method taking explicitly into account the Probe Trajectory (PT) as shown on figure.

Results

In order to underline the revelance of Probe Trajectory information in the interpolation process, we compare PT method with two other classical methods: Voxel Nearest Neighbor (VNN) and Distance Weighted (DW) interpolation.

Zoom on hepatic vessels extracted from liver reconstruction. From left to right the VNN, DW and PT methods. The images are extracted from 3D volume along the temporal axis (z) in order to under-light inherent artifacts of the VNN (i.e. discontinuities) and the DW (i.e. blur) methods.

Results for US sequence of brain. Top: the preoperative MRI and the US reconstruction obtained with the VNN method. On the bottom: the reconstruction obtained with DW and PT approaches. The low-grade glioma appears in gray in MR image and in white in US images. Visually, the PT method preserves more the edges continuity especially on sulci edges (see at the center bottom of images).

The PT method is more efficient at preserving the native texture pattern of US image and enhancing the edges than the DW method. The numerical validation of PT method is presented in [1,2], this validation shows that the better quality of reconstruction for the PT method is obtained at the expense of a slight computation time increase. Contrary to more elaborated techniques like non-rigid registration [4] or radial basis fonction interpolation [6] , which are considerably computationally expensive, the PT approach offers an attractive compromise between computation time and reconstruction quality.

The PT method is implemented in TULIPE [7] software: Three-dimensional ULtrasound reconstruction Incorporating ProbE trajectory.

References

[1] P. Coupé, P. Hellier, X. Morandi, C. Barillot. Probe Trajectory Interpolation for 3D Reconstruction of Freehand Ultrasound. Medical Image Analysis, 11(6):604-615, 2007.

[2] P. Coupé, P. Hellier, N. Azzabou, C. Barillot. 3D Freehand Ultrasound Reconstruction based on Probe Trajectory. In 8th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI'2005, J. Duncan, G. Gerig (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3749, Pages 597-604, Palm Springs, USA, October 2005.

[3] C.D. Barry, C.P. Allott, N.W. John, P.M. Mellor, P.A. Arundel, D.S. Thomson, and J.C. Waterton. Three dimensional freehand ultrasound: image reconstruction and volume analysis. Ultrasound in medecine and biology, 23(8):1209--1224, 1997

[4] G.P. Penney, J.A. Schnabel, D.Rueckert, M.A. Viergever, and W.J. Niessen. Registration-based interpolation. IEEE Trans Med Imaging, 23(7):922--926, 2004.

[5] R.W. Prager, A.H. Gee, and L.Berman. Stradx : real-time acquisition and visualization of freehand three-dimensional ultrasound. Medical Image Analysis, 3(2):129--140, 1999.

[6] R.Rohling, A.H. Gee, L.H. Berman, and G.M. Treece. Radial basis function interpolation for freehand 3D ultrasound. In Attila Kuba, Martin Samal, and Andrew Todd-Pokropek, editors, Information Processing in Medical Imaging, volume 1613 of LNCS, pages 478--483. Springer, 1999.

[7] P. Coupé, P. Hellier, C. Barillot. TULIPE : Three-dimensional ULtrasound reconstruction Incorporating ProbE trajectory. Depot a l'Agence pour la Protection des Programmes, numero IDDN.FR.001.120034.000.A.2006.000.21000, January 2006.