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.
Highlights
Many imaging technologies have been applied to enhance clinicians’ ability for diagnosis of the disease, for example, the X-ray, magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT), and ultrasound (US)
Due to the lack of the anatomy and orientation information, clinicians have to imagine the volume with the planar 2D images mentally when they need the view of 3D anatomic structures
It is undeniable that 3D US enables clinicians to diagnose fast and accurately as it reduces the time spent on evaluating images and interacts with diagnosticians friendly to obtain a handle of the shape and location of the lesion
Summary
Many imaging technologies have been applied to enhance clinicians’ ability for diagnosis of the disease, for example, the X-ray, magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT), and ultrasound (US). Each imaging modality has its strengths and limitations in different applications [1] Among these diagnosis-aid technologies, US gains more and more attention in recent years. Traditional 3D US is temporally separated into the B-scan frame collection, volume reconstruction, and visualization stages individually, making it time-consuming and inefficient to obtain an accurate 3D image. It is no doubt that real-time 3D US will facilitate physicians’ ability in diagnosis even better and help them work more efficiently during the surgery. Several attempts with the dedicated 3D probe or traditional 2D probe to reconstruct and render a volume during data acquisition are available. Reconstruction algorithms, rendering methods, and clinical applications are discussed including the advantage and disadvantages of each approach
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