Evaluation of three 3D US calibration methods
Johann B. Hummel, Marcus Kaar, Rainer Hoffmann, Amon Bhatia, Wolfgang Birkfellner, Michael Figl · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2013
With the introduction of 3D US image devices the demand for accurate and fast 3D calibration methods arose. We implemented three different calibration methods and compared the calibration results in terms of fiducial registration error (FRE) and target registration error (TRE). The three calibration methods included a multi-points phantom (MP), a feature based model (FM) and a membrane model (MM). With respect to the sphere method a simple point-to-point registration was applied. For the feature based model we employed a phantom consisting of spheres, pyramids and cones. These objects were imaged from different angles and a 3D3D registration was applied for all possible image combinations. The last method was accomplished by imaging a simple membrane which allows for calculation of the calibration matrix. For a first evaluation we computed the FRE for each method. To assess the calibration success on real patient data we used ten 3D3D registrations between images from the prostate. The FRE for the sphere method amounted to 1.40 mm, for the figure method to 1.05 mm and with respect to the membrane method to 1.12 mm. The deviation arising from ten 3D3D patient registration were 3.44 mm (MP), 2.93 mm (FM)and 2.84 mm (MM). The MM revealed to be the most accurate of the evaluated procedure while the MP has shown significant higher errors. The results from FM were close to the one from MM and also significant better than the one with the SM. Between FM and MM no significant difference was to detect.