Method for real-time tracking of cardiac structures in 3D echocardiography

摘要

A method for tracking motion and shape changes of a deformable model in a volumetric image sequence. The method is operable to predict the surface of a space from a 3D image, such as cardiac structures from a 3D ultrasound. The shape and position of a deformable model is predicted for each frame of an ultrasound image. Edge detection is then performed for each predicted point on the deformable model perpendicular to the model surface. The distances between the predicted and measured edges for the deformable model are measurements for a Kalman filter. The measurements are coupled with noise values that specify the spatial uncertainty of the edge detection. The measurement data are subsequently summed together in information space and combined with the prediction in the Kalman filter to estimate the position and deformation for the deformable model. The deformable model is then updated to generate an updated surface model.