A Simplified 3D Ultrasound Freehand Imaging Framework Using 1D Linear Probe and Low-Cost Mechanical Track

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simplified 3D ultrasound imaging framework using a 1D linear probe and a low-cost mechanical track, improving reconstruction accuracy and ease of use for point-of-care diagnostics.

Contribution

It presents a novel mechanical track system for linear probe movement, streamlining 3D ultrasound acquisition and reconstruction, validated through phantom and ex-vivo experiments.

Findings

Effective 3D volume reconstruction demonstrated in phantom studies

Mechanical track approach outperforms sensorless freehand methods

Low-cost setup simplifies 3D ultrasound imaging process

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is the most popular medical imaging modality for point-of-care bedside imaging. However, 2D ultrasound imaging provides only limited views of the organ of interest, making diagnosis challenging. To overcome this, 3D ultrasound imaging was developed, which uses 2D ultrasound images and their orientation/position to reconstruct 3D volumes. The accurate position estimation of the ultrasound probe at low cost has always stood as a challenging task in 3D reconstruction. In this study, we propose a novel approach of using a mechanical track for ultrasound scanning, which restricts the probe motion to a linear plane, simplifying the acquisition and hence the reconstruction process. We also present an end-to-end pipeline for 3D ultrasound volume reconstruction and demonstrate its efficacy with an in-vitro tube phantom study and an ex-vivo bone experiment. The comparison between a sensorless freehand and the proposed mechanical track based acquisition is available online (shorturl.at/jqvX0).