Reconstruction of three-dimensional ultrasound images based on cyclic Savitzky–Golay filters

摘要

We present a new algorithm for reconstructing a three-ndimensional (3-D) ultrasound image from a series of two-dimensionalnB-scan ultrasound slices acquired in the mechanical linear scan-nning framework. Unlike most existing 3-D ultrasound reconstructionnalgorithms, which have been developed and evaluated in the free-nhand scanning framework, the new algorithm has been designed toncapitalize the regularity pattern of the mechanical linear scanning,nwhere all the B-scan slices are precisely parallel and evenly spaced.nThe new reconstruction algorithm, referred to as the cyclic Savitzky–nGolay (CSG) reconstruction filter, is an improvement on the originalnSavitzky–Golay filter in two respects: First, it is extended to acceptna 3-D array of data as the filter input instead of a one-dimensionalndata sequence. Second, it incorporates the cyclic indicator functionnin its least-squares objective function so that the CSG algorithm cannsimultaneously perform both smoothing and interpolating tasks. Thenperformance of the CSGreconstruction filter compared to that ofmostnexisting reconstruction algorithms in generating a 3-D synthetic testnimage and a clinical 3-D carotid artery bifurcation in the mechanicalnlinear scanning framework are also reported