Spatial and temporal alignment for volume rendering in medical diagnostic ultrasound
AssigneeSiemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.
InventorsArun Tirumalai, Richard M. Bennett
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Ultrasound data is aligned spatially and temporally for volume rendering of a fetal heart or other cyclically moving object. A sequence of ultrasound data is obtained for each of a plurality of planes, such as acquiring data representing each plane over one or more cycles. The different planes are scanned sequentially in a step mode acquisition. The data is aligned temporally and spatially to create data representing volumes at different times throughout the cycle. The alignment uses similarity of the ultrasound data in time and space.
Claims20
A method for spatial and temporal alignment for volume rendering, the method comprising:
- acquiring a first plurality of frames of ultrasound data for a first scan plane;
- acquiring, after the first plurality, a second plurality of frames of ultrasound data for a second scan plane different than the first scan plane;
- identifying a first cycle as a function of time from the ultrasound data for the first scan plane;
- identifying a second cycle as a function of time from the ultrasound data for the second scan plane;
- determining a phase shift between the first and second cycles;
- forming first and second volumes from the first and second pluralities of frames, the forming being a function of the phase shift and the first and second cycles, the first volume formed from ultrasound data representing a first cyclic phase and the second volume formed from ultrasound data representing a second cyclic phase.
A system for spatial and temporal alignment for volume rendering, the system comprising:
- a transducer and beamformer operable to scan a region with a cyclical object with ultrasound, the transducer operable to scan in a step mode, a plurality of scans of a same plane performed in each step, each step associated with a different plane;
- and
- a processor operable to determine spatial similarity of the plurality of scans of the same plane, operable to determine a temporal similarity of the scans of different planes as a function of the spatial similarity, and operable to temporally and spatially align the scans into volumes.
In a computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for spatial and temporal alignment for volume rendering, the storage medium comprising instructions for:
- collecting a sequence of images at each of a plurality of different imaging planes;
- identifying, in each sequence, images associated with a same phase of a cycle;
- temporally aligning the sequences of images;
- and
- forming volumes each representing a different phase of the cycle from the sequences.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.