HoloPOCUS: Portable Mixed-Reality 3D Ultrasound Tracking, Reconstruction and Overlay

TL;DR

HoloPOCUS is a portable mixed-reality ultrasound system that enables real-time 3D reconstruction and overlay, improving procedural guidance and diagnostic consistency in point-of-care settings.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MR-US system that extends beyond simple US plane overlay to include accurate 3D reconstruction and projection for enhanced navigation.

Findings

Higher tracking accuracy compared to existing methods.

Significant reduction in navigation time in user studies.

Effective real-time 3D ultrasound overlay in clinical settings.

Abstract

Ultrasound (US) imaging provides a safe and accessible solution to procedural guidance and diagnostic imaging. The effective usage of conventional 2D US for interventional guidance requires extensive experience to project the image plane onto the patient, and the interpretation of images in diagnostics suffers from high intra- and inter-user variability. 3D US reconstruction allows for more consistent diagnosis and interpretation, but existing solutions are limited in terms of equipment and applicability in real-time navigation. To address these issues, we propose HoloPOCUS - a mixed reality US system (MR-US) that overlays rich US information onto the user's vision in a point-of-care setting. HoloPOCUS extends existing MR-US methods beyond placing a US plane in the user's vision to include a 3D reconstruction and projection that can aid in procedural guidance using conventional probes. We validated a tracking pipeline that demonstrates higher accuracy compared to existing MR-US works. Furthermore, user studies conducted via a phantom task showed significant improvements in navigation duration when using our proposed methods.