Method and apparatus for tracking scan plane motion in free-hand three- dimensional ultrasound scanning using adaptive speckle correlation

摘要

A method and an apparatus for tracking scan plane motion in free- hand three-dimensional ultrasound scanning using adaptive speckle correlation. The method employs a correlation index which adapts to different display dynamic range and post-processing filters. The method may include the following steps: choosing a kernel within each frame image for correlation calculations; rejecting duplicate image frames; measuring the degree of correlation between successive image frames; rejecting correlation estimates which may be associated with hand jitter and other artifacts; and computing the average frame-to-frame (i.e., interslice) spacing based on the average correlation estimate. This image- based motion tracking technique enables three-dimensional reconstruction with good geometric fidelity, without use of any external position- sensing device.