Image acquisition method

A computer-implemented method for use during an ultrasound scan performed by a user with an ultrasound acquisition apparatus, comprising:

• receiving from the ultrasound acquisition apparatus real-time 3D ultrasound data of an anatomical object, comprising a series of one or more 3D frames, each 3D frame spanning a 3D volume;
• determining a plurality of target planes through the 3D volume to be extracted and recording said target planes in a target plane list;
• performing a plane capturing operation comprising, for each of at least a subset of the 3D frames of the 3D ultrasound data:
• extracting a selected set of the determined plurality of target planes from the 3D ultrasound data,
• controlling a user interface to provide a real-time ultrasound image display output displaying a selected subset of the extracted set of planes of the current frame, and
• storing the extracted planes in a plane dataset performing, in parallel with the plane capturing operation, a quality assessment operation comprising:
• applying a pre-determined quality assessment algorithm to planes in the plane dataset to determine, for each target plane in the target plane list, whether any individual extracted plane in the plane dataset corresponding to the target plane meets a pre-defined quality standard, or whether a time-series of extracted planes in the plane dataset corresponding to the same target plane meets a pre-defined quality standard, and
• updating the target plane list to remove from the list any of the target planes which has met the pre-defined quality standard;
• repeating the steps of the plane capturing operation for each next 3D frame of the series of frames until the target plane list is empty,
• wherein, for each frame, the selected set of target planes to be extracted comprises at least each of the planes still included on the target plane list;
• wherein, for each frame, the selected subset of the extracted planes to be displayed on the user interface includes at least one of the planes still included on the target plane list.