3D ultrasound image stitching
US10398412B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignees
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 31, 2015 |
| Grant date | Sep 3, 2019 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 18, 2035 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T2207/30101
- WIPO fieldMedical technology
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
A computer-implemented method for combining two 3-dimensional ultrasound images of a patient's body part containing blood vessels into a single 3-dimensional ultrasound image of that body part with a greater field of view. Blood vessels within the body part are used for registration. The two ultrasound images are preprocessed using a vessel enhancement algorithm to derive two corresponding enhanced images. The enhanced images can undergo a registration process based upon minimizing a mean-square-difference metric to derive an enhanced rigid transform, which represents a transform that maps the first enhanced image onto the second enhanced image. The two enhanced images are seamlessly combined via a blending process (via the use of a distance transform based weighting of the voxel values) to derive an output image.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.