Ultrasound imaging system and method for forming a 3d ultrasound image of a target object

An ultrasound imaging system, comprising:

• an ultrasound diagnostic unit for providing 3D volume data of an object and its neighboring region, wherein the 3D volume data is formed with a number of frames;
• a pre-processing unit for selecting a predetermined number of key frames from the frames;
• a segmentation unit for segmenting each of the key frames into object regions and non-object regions;
• a texture-based region classifying and merging unit for classifying the object regions and the non-object regions into object sub-regions and non-object sub-regions based on the texture thereof, the texture-based region classifying and merging unit further being configured to remove the non-object sub-regions in the key frames and merge the object sub-regions;
• a surface determining unit for extracting contours of the object in the key frames and determining a 3D surface of the object by connecting the contours extracted from the key frames;
• and
• a rendering unit for forming masked volume with the determined 3D surface and forming a 3D ultrasound image of the object by rendering the masked volume.