Incremental refinement method for 3D visualization of ultrasonic images
Feng Lin, Seah Hock Soon, Lee Yong Tsui, Chong Man Nang, Daniel H. Tan, David Flyn, Peter Mack · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
Compared with other medical imaging modalities, ultrasonic imaging has its advantages of safety, low cost, and very importantly, real-time performance in data acquisition. To match the real-time data acquisition, interactivity is considered as one of the crucial characteristics for 3D ultrasonic imaging systems. This paper proposes an incremental refinement method in a multi-process system with an eye on ultimately running real-time 3D ultrasonic imaging applications. We use deformable geometric models as templates of the target biomedical objects. With a matching and refining procedure, the geometric data will be incrementally refined on the arrival of each injected boundary from 2D ultrasonic slice. All the data processing tasks are distributed to a set of processes which are connected in a graphic environment. Each process incrementally reads the data received from its upstream and produces new data for its downstream. By simultaneously running different processes, the system gradually transforms the 3D templates to match the detected ultrasonic images.