The Ultrasound Visualization Pipeline - A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews the ultrasound visualization pipeline, highlighting recent research trends, techniques, and challenges in real-time imaging, segmentation, registration, and augmented reality to improve diagnostic interpretation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of ultrasound visualization processes and categorizes recent significant publications into a technique-based taxonomy.

Findings

Identifies key trends in ultrasound visualization research.

Highlights differences between ultrasound and other imaging modalities.

Summarizes recent advances in real-time visualization techniques.

Abstract

Ultrasound is one of the most frequently used imaging modality in medicine. The high spatial resolution, its interactive nature and non-invasiveness makes it the first choice in many examinations. Image interpretation is one of ultrasound's main challenges. Much training is required to obtain a confident skill level in ultrasound-based diagnostics. State-of-the-art graphics techniques is needed to provide meaningful visualizations of ultrasound in real-time. In this paper we present the process-pipeline for ultrasound visualization, including an overview of the tasks performed in the specific steps. To provide an insight into the trends of ultrasound visualization research, we have selected a set of significant publications and divided them into a technique-based taxonomy covering the topics pre-processing, segmentation, registration, rendering and augmented reality. For the different technique types we discuss the difference between ultrasound-based techniques and techniques for other modalities.