MODEL-BASED COMPENSATION OF TISSUE DEFORMATION DURING DATA ACQUISITION FOR INTERPOLATIVE ULTRASOUND SIMULATION

摘要

Interpretation of ultrasound relies heavily on the skill and expertise of the performing physician. Therefore, its training is essential, for which computerized virtual-reality simulators can offer a viable solution. In image-based interpolative simulation, a previously acquired 3D ultrasound volume in an undeformed state of the anatomy being interacted is utilized. Acquisition of such volumes involve pressure on the skin by the transducer, thereby the volumes cannot be used directly for simulation. In this work, we propose to correct for tissue deformation caused by the probe during acquisition using volumetric finite-element models locally around the contact area. We show that a generic homogeneous model is sufficient for visual fidelity and for further 3D panorama reconstruction from multiple pressure-compensated volumes. We further show that applying such deformation correction on prescan-converted data preserves ultrasound texture more realistically than post-scan-converted data, with respective worstcase losses of 35% vs. 1% intensity standard-deviation.