• Ultrasound upgrades display 3-D images

    Three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound is fast becoming a new nonintrusive medical imaging technique as a result of parallel processing. A few commercial vendors already offer 3-D ultrasound systems, but many require several minutes to reconstruct three-dimensional images.
    Dec. 1, 1996
    2 min read

    Ultrasound upgrades display 3-D images

    Three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound is fast becoming a new nonintrusive medical imaging technique as a result of parallel processing. A few commercial vendors already offer 3-D ultrasound systems, but many require several minutes to reconstruct three-dimensional images.

    At the Fraunhofer Institute (Darmstadt, Germany), Dr. Georgios Sakas and his colleagues have developed a system, InVivo, that allows existing commercial two-dimensional (2-D) ultrasound systems to be upgraded to 3-D ones. Because the system uses external components, existing hardware and software need not be modified.

    As a result, the 2-D examination procedure remains unchanged with the physician only using the 3-D mode when required. To upgrade an existing 2-D ultrasound system, two components must be added. First, an electromechanical tracking system must be mounted onto the ultrasound transducer. Next, the video output of the ultrasound machine is digitized using a frame grabber attached to a PC. Every image is then stored along with its corresponding coordinates in system memory.

    After scanning is complete, software optimizes the slice-to-volume resampling procedure by filtering multiple entries using optimal pixels for a given location and interpolates pixels in areas where no scan has been performed. In this way, a 3-D reconstruction of the image is accomplished. At present, InVivo software is available for both PowerPCs under AIX and Sun SPARC stations under SunOS 5.1x. For more information contact [email protected].

    Sign up for Vision Systems Design Newsletters
    Get the latest news and updates.

    Voice Your Opinion!

    To join the conversation, and become an exclusive member of Vision Systems Design, create an account today!