A Review on Real-Time 3D Ultrasound Imaging Technology

Abstract

Real-time three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound (US) has attracted much more attention in medical researches because it provides interactive feedback to help clinicians acquire high-quality images as well as timely spatial information of the scanned area and hence is necessary in intraoperative ultrasound examinations. Plenty of publications have been declared to complete the real-time or near real-time visualization of 3D ultrasound using volumetric probes or the routinely used two-dimensional (2D) probes. So far, a review on how to design an interactive system with appropriate processing algorithms remains missing, resulting in the lack of systematic understanding of the relevant technology. In this article, previous and the latest work on designing a real-time or near real-time 3D ultrasound imaging system are reviewed. Specifically, the data acquisition techniques, reconstruction algorithms, volume rendering methods, and clinical applications are presented. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of state-of-the-art approaches are discussed in detail.

Development of a patient‐specific atrial phantom model for planning and training of inter‐atrial interventions

“…Although higher errors were found in this experiment (Table II) when compared with experiment 1 (CT acquisition versus ideal model, Table I), it can be easily explained by the difficulties to visualize the boundary positions in US images, image artifacts caused by the water tank walls, the difficulties to the detect limits of the generated orifices and the low field of view of the TEE probe (which hamper the identification of the phantom's extreme positions). [32][33][34] In addition and as discussed in other studies, 32,35 manual segmentation of US images is more prone to errors and harder to be performed than in CT, justifying again the higher errors found in Table II. To increase the realism of the current ultrasound image, graphite particles or glycerin should be combined with the flexible material, as suggested in previous studies. 14 Such particles will generate speckle noise in the resulting ultrasound image, making the cardiac wall heterogeneous (i.e., multiple intensity values in the ultrasound image) and thus obtaining more realistic, non-saturated walls.…”

“…Although higher errors were found in this experiment (Table ) when compared with experiment 1 (CT acquisition versus ideal model, Table ), it can be easily explained by the difficulties to visualize the boundary positions in US images, image artifacts caused by the water tank walls, the difficulties to the detect limits of the generated orifices and the low field of view of the TEE probe (which hamper the identification of the phantom's extreme positions) . In addition and as discussed in other studies, manual segmentation of US images is more prone to errors and harder to be performed than in CT, justifying again the higher errors found in Table .…”

A Survey on 3D Ultrasound Reconstruction Techniques

“…Besides that, the transducer and ultrasound machine between different companies are not compatible to each other, due to the commercialized competition among the competitors [5]. Furthermore, the size of the acquired volume is limited by the geometric dimension of the transducer [3,6].…”

Emerging Technological Advances in Musculoskeletal Ultrasound

“…The imaging reconstruction time is short, which enables viewing 3D images in real time. However, the operator is required to hold the mechanical 3D transducer statically during image acquisition, making it more susceptible to errors [54].…”