High-Quality Intra-operative Ultrasound Reconstruction Based on Catheter Path

This paper presents a new method for improving image quality of intra-operative ultrasound for catheter intervention. A preliminary volume was constructed by extracting all colored pixels of 2D Doppler images. After center line was computed, cross sections of vessel were sampled and segmented by a modified region growing combining intensity distribution, curvature and area threshold. An ellipse was estimated based on the segmented contour. Finally, the estimated ellipses were interpolated onto the new center line which was registered to catheter path. The method was evaluated by a vessel phantom with bifurcations. The results show that the modified region growing can estimate an accurate contour and a high quality reconstruction can be obtained by interpolating estimated cross sections.