Quantitative evaluation of three calibration methods for 3-D freehand ultrasound

In this paper, three different calibration methods for three-dimensional (3-D) freehand ultrasound (US) are evaluated. Calibration is the process of estimating the rigid transformation from US image coordinates to the coordinate system of the tracking sensor mounted onto the probe. Calibration accuracy has an important impact on quantitative studies. Geometrical precision can also be crucial in many interventions and surgery. The proposed evaluation framework relies on a single point phantom and a 3-D US phantom which mimics the US characteristics of human liver. Four quality measures are used: 3-D point localization criterion, distance and volume measurements, and shape based criterion. Results show that during the acquisition procedure, volumetric measurements and shapes of the reconstructed object depend on probe motion used, particularly fan motions for which errors are larger. It is also shown that accurate calibration is essential to obtain reliable quantitative information.     

Registration of real-time 3-D ultrasound images of the heart for novel 3-D stress echocardiography

Stress echocardiography is a routinely used clinical procedure to diagnose cardiac dysfunction by comparing wall motion information in prestress and poststress ultrasound images. Incomplete data, complicated imaging protocols and misaligned prestress and poststress views, however, are known limitations of conventional stress echocardiography. We discuss how the first two limitations are overcome via the use of real-time three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound imaging, an emerging modality, and have called the new procedure "3-D stress echocardiography." We also show that the problem of misaligned views can be solved by registration of prestress and poststress 3-D image sequences. Such images are misaligned because of variations in placing the ultrasound transducer and stress-induced anatomical changes. We have developed a technique to temporally align 3-D images of the two sequences first and then to spatially register them to rectify probe placement error while preserving the stress-induced changes. The 3-D spatial registration is mutual information-based. Image registration used in conjunction with 3-D stress echocardiography can potentially improve the diagnostic accuracy of stress testing.     

An efficient coordinate frame calibration method for 3-D measurement by multiple camera systems

Extrinsic calibration or coordinate frame calibration of multiple cameras is a critical step for conducting three-dimensional measurement effectively from visual images. Based on the concept of relative world coordinate system, an efficient method for calibrating the coordinate frames for multiple cameras has been developed in this paper. Its basic idea is to compute the transformation matrices between cameras from their individual transformation matrices to a relative world coordinate system such that its absolute coordinate information is not required and methods for single camera calibration can be utilized. A solution procedure that separates rotational parameters from translation parameters of transformation matrices has been developed where the rotational parameters are obtained first by solving a set of nonlinear equations involving two Euler angular parameters, while the translational parameters are then calculated analytically. In addition, equations for calculating the depth information and matching lines in general cases have been presented. Finally, a detailed numerical investigation regarding the error and sensitivity analysis of the proposed calibration algorithms has been performed extensively.     

Rapid elastic image registration for 3-D ultrasound

A Subvolume-based algorithm for elastic Ultrasound REgistration (SURE) was developed and evaluated. Designed primarily to improve spatial resolution in three-dimensional compound imaging, the algorithm registers individual image volumes nonlinearly before combination into compound volumes. SURE works in one or two stages, optionally using MIAMI Fuse software first to determine a global affine registration before iteratively dividing the volume into subvolumes and computing local rigid registrations in the second stage. Connectivity of the entire volume is ensured by global interpolation using thin-plate splines after each iteration. The performance of SURE was quantified in 20 synthetically deformed in vivo ultrasound volumes, and in two phantom scans, one of which was distorted at acquisition by placing an aberrating layer in the sound path. The aberrating layer was designed to induce beam aberrations reported for the female breast. Synthetic deformations of 1.5-2.5 mm were reduced by over 85% when SURE was applied to register the distorted image volumes with the original ones. Registration times were below 5 min on a 500-MHz CPU for an average data set size of 13 MB. In the aberrated phantom scans, SURE reduced the average deformation between the two volumes from 1.01 to 0.30 mm. This was a statistically significant (P = 0.01) improvement over rigid and affine registration transformations, which produced reductions to 0.59 and 0.50 mm, respectively.     

Improving calibration of 3-D video oculography systems

Eye movement recordings with video-based techniques have become very popular, as long as they are restricted to the horizontal and vertical movements of the eye. Reliable measurement of the torsional component of eye movements, which is especially important in the diagnosis and investigation of pathologies, has remained a coveted goal. One of the main reasons is unresolved technical difficulties in the analysis of video-based images of the eye. Based on simulations, we present solutions to two of the primary problems: a robust and reliable calibration of horizontal and vertical eye movement recordings, and the extraction of suitable iris patterns for the determination of the torsional eye position component.     

A novel 3-D subsurface radar imaging technique

The problem of the formation of subsurface images using stand-off forward looking radar is by far more severe than that of forming the radar images in the free-space. A subsurface image needs to be accurately focused taking into account both the refraction and dispersion of the wavefield. This paper presents a novel imaging algorithm specially tailored for subsurface sensing. A simple and effective characterization technique for the retrieval of the dielectric permittivity is outlined. The proposed soil characterization and subsurface imaging techniques are validated experimentally. Results show that the geometric distortion in the subsurface images due to the refraction and dispersion of the wavefields is successfully corrected     

A novel algorithm based on the domain-decomposition method for the full-wave analysis of 3-D electromagnetic problems

A novel technique based on the domain-decomposition method and frequency-domain finite-difference method is presented for the full-wave analysis of three-dimensional electromagnetic problems. In this method, the original domain is decomposed into sub-domains, Maxwell's equations are then solved in each sub-domain independently, and the global solution is achieved finally by an iterative procedure. It greatly reduces the computational complexity and the memory requirement compared with the conventional finite-difference method and method of moments, etc. To reduce CPU time, some techniques, such as the relaxation iterative algorithm, overlapped domain decomposition, and multimesh resolution are also investigated and adopted to accelerate the algorithm. The validity of this algorithm is verified by numerical examples, including the analysis of a multilayered aperture-coupled patch antenna, the scattering characteristic analysis of conducting pillars, and the S-parameters extraction of the air-bridge discontinuity.     

A new 3-D display method for 12-lead ECG

A new three-dimensional (3-D) 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) display method is presented which employs a 3-D rectangular coordinate system to display the 12-lead cardiac electric signals in two 3-D graphs. The 3-D graph consists of a temporal axis representing the time domain of the cardiac signals, a spatial axis representing the lead positions, and an amplitude axis representing the voltages of the cardiac signals. The six horizontal plane leads and the other six frontal plane leads were displayed in two 3-D graphs, respectively. The voltages of the cardiac signals were represented in rainbow-like colors. Cubic interpolation was employed to insert interconnecting points between neighboring leads on each plane and to smooth the surface of the 3-D ECG graphs. The 3-D ECG graphs of a normal subject, a patient with myocardial infarction, and a patient with left bundle branch block were presented in this paper. This new display method could not only be used as a complementary display method to the 12-lead ECG, but also provide physicians with an overall integral view about the spatial distribution of the cardiac signals.     

一种用于人脸识别的三维人脸模型重建方法

针对以往三维人脸模型重建算法实用性差、算法复杂度高、需要通用人脸模型和对噪声敏感等缺陷，提出了一种计算量小、无需通用人脸模型的三维人脸模型的重建算法。该算法在人工辅助确定特征点的基础上，利用能量函数最小的约束关系实现深度图的初步融合，然后运用改进ICP算法获得隐式的三维人脸模型。通过对获得模型的变换和投影，可产生不同姿态的二维人脸图像。实验结果表明，融合平均误差仅为1．32毫米，效果逼真。和其它算法相比，它还具有存储资源消耗少、算法稳定性高等优点。     

A multichannel pipeline analog-to-digital converter for an integrated 3-D ultrasound imaging system

An 8-channel 10-bit pipeline analog-to-digital converter, designed for use in an integrated three-dimensional ultrasound imaging system, has been implemented in a 0.25-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. Two parallel multiplexing sample-and-hold stages are employed to multiplex a total of eight adjacent ultrasound channels, each sampled at 20 MHz. The sampled and multiplexed signals are fed into two parallel time-interleaved pipeline paths, each operating at 80 MHz. The two parallel pipelines are subsequently multiplexed into a single pipeline operating at 160 MHz to conserve area and reduce complexity. An experimental prototype of the proposed architecture occupies less than 4 mm/sup 2/ of active silicon area and shows a peak signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio more than 54 dB for a 2.1-MHz input signal, while dissipating only 20 mW of analog power per input channel from a 2.5-V supply.     

Deformable segmentation of 3-D ultrasound prostate images using statistical texture matching method

This paper presents a novel deformable model for automatic segmentation of prostates from three-dimensional ultrasound images, by statistical matching of both shape and texture. A set of Gabor-support vector machines (G-SVMs) are positioned on different patches of the model surface, and trained to adaptively capture texture priors of ultrasound images for differentiation of prostate and nonprostate tissues in different zones around prostate boundary. Each G-SVM consists of a Gabor filter bank for extraction of rotation-invariant texture features and a kernel support vector machine for robust differentiation of textures. In the deformable segmentation procedure, these pretrained G-SVMs are used to tentatively label voxels around the surface of deformable model as prostate or nonprostate tissues by a statistical texture matching. Subsequently, the surface of deformable model is driven to the boundary between the tentatively labeled prostate and non-prostate tissues. Since the step of tissue labeling and the step of label-based surface deformation are dependent on each other, these two steps are repeated until they converge. Experimental results by using both synthesized and real data show the good performance of the proposed model in segmenting prostates from ultrasound images.     

A novel approach to the 2-D blind deconvolution problem in medical ultrasound

The finite frequency bandwidth of ultrasound transducers and the nonnegligible width of transmitted acoustic beams are the most significant factors that limit the resolution of medical ultrasound imaging. Consequently, in order to recover diagnostically important image details, obscured due to the resolution limitations, an image restoration procedure should be applied. The present study addresses the problem of ultrasound image restoration by means of the blind-deconvolution techniques. Given an acquired ultrasound image, algorithms of this kind perform either concurrent or successive estimation of the point-spread function (PSF) of the imaging system and the original image. In this paper, a blind-deconvolution algorithm is proposed, in which the PSF is recovered as a preliminary stage of the restoration problem. As the accuracy of this estimation affects all the following stages of the image restoration, it is considered as the most fundamental and important problem. The contribution of the present study is twofold. First, it introduces a novel approach to the problem of estimating the PSF, which is based on a generalization of several fundamental concepts of the homomorphic deconvolution. It is shown that a useful estimate of the spectrum of the PSF can be obtained by applying a proper smoothing operator to both log-magnitude and phase of the spectra of acquired radio-frequency (RF) images. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach performs considerably better than the existing homomorphic (cepstrum-based) deconvolution methods. Second, the study shows that given a reliable estimate of the PSF, it is possible to deconvolve it out of the RF-image and obtain an estimate of the true tissue reflectivity function, which is relatively independent of the properties of the imaging system. The deconvolution was performed using the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) estimation framework for a number of statistical priors assumed for the reflectivity function. It is shown in a series of in vivo experiments that reconstructions based on the priors, which tend to emphasize the "sparseness" of the tissue structure, result in solutions of higher resolution and contrast.     

A novel dimension-reduction technique for the capacitanceextraction of 3-D VLSI interconnects

In this paper, a new capacitance extraction method called the dimension-reduction technique (DRT) is presented for three-dimensional (3-D) very large-scale integration (VLSI) interconnects. The DRT converts a complex 3-D problem into a series of cascading simple two-dimensional (2-D) problems. Each 2-D problem is solved separately, thus we can choose the most efficient method according to the arrangement of conductors. We have used the DRT to extract the capacitance matrix of multilayered and multiconductor crossovers, bends, vias with signal lines, and open-end. The results are in close agreement with those of Ansoft's SPICELINK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) FastCap, but the computing time and memory size used by the DRT are several (even ten) times less than those used by SPICELINK and FastCap     

A novel technique for the approximation of 3-D antenna radiation patterns

In this paper, a novel technique for the approximation of three-dimensional (3-D) antenna radiation patterns is presented. The proposed method combines the two principal cuts in order to acquire an adequate estimate of the 3-D antenna radiation solid. The absolute error from the theoretical solution is analyzed along with other statistical measures for various types of antenna structures, namely omni-directional and directive arrays. The performance of the method is compared against other existing extrapolation algorithms. The proposed technique exhibits low approximation errors and is easily integrated into 3-D radio propagation planning tools (such as ray-tracing algorithms).     

A method of ultrasonic 3-D computed velocimetry

A method of ultrasonic three-dimensional (3-D) vector velocimetry, which is derived by extending the previously proposed two-dimensional (2-D) vector velocimetry, is presented. In the proposed method, the three vector components of velocity to be measured are defined as the velocity in the beam axial direction, and angle velocities in two transverse directions. To derive the three components of velocity, signals detected by a 2-D array transducer are first 2-D Fourier transformed in the spatial domain parallel to the 2-D array transducer and then are one-dimensional (1-D) Fourier transformed in the time domain. The advantage of the proposed method is that it uses a linear signal processing, so it can simultaneously measure individual velocities of multiple scatterers. Computer simulations clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method     

A simple 2-D/3-D method for fast analysis of patch resonators withhigh accuracy

For a patch resonator, a two-dimensional (2-D) planar circuit analysis (modal or contour integral) has advantages of being simple and fast. However, this method does not account for perturbation of the fringe fields at the edge. A three-dimensional (3-D) analysis such as integral equation moment method has the advantage of accounting for the fringe fields at the edge, however, the disadvantage of having to long computation time and high truncation error. A better way is to make use of advantages of both and discard the disadvantages. The result is the combined 2-D/3-D method described in this paper. This method requires a few seconds of computer time, but gives errors of resonance frequency only around 0.5%. The errors in general are within the tolerances of presently available analysis and experiments. Field theory reasons accounting for such fast convergent and low error results, are explained and numerical examples are given     

一种用于结构光测量系统的投影仪标定技术

投影仪是光学三维测量系统中重要的设备,对投影仪进行标定是光学三维测量算法中的关键步骤。介绍了一种投影仪的标定方法,该方法基于传统的摄像机标定模型,借助摄像机及二维棋盘格标定板,并结合透视投影矫正方法获取投影仪标定特征点坐标,实现对投影仪的标定。该方法相对于现有的标定方法操作简便,标定成本低,有效降低了投影仪标定的复杂度。实验表明,标定精度能满足测量的要求。     

A novel 3-D CPFDTD scheme for modeling grid nonconformally aligned transmitter structures

In this paper, a novel three-dimensional (3-D) subcell algorithm for modeling metallic objects which are nonconformally oriented within the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) grid is proposed. The generally applicable algorithm is based on the contour-path (CP) technique and enables, in combination with an enhanced nonconformally aligned source model, a more accurate spatial representation of antenna structures than the common staircase approach. To evaluate the performance of the new algorithm, the simulation results are compared with the classical staircase approach for dipole antennas as well as for a generic phone. Significant improvements were achieved for all antenna parameters from the near and far field, i.e., feedpoint impedance, radiation pattern, and field distributions.     

Concurrent 3-D motion segmentation and 3-D interpretation of temporal sequences of monocular images.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a variational method for joint multiregion three-dimensional (3-D) motion segmentation and 3-D interpretation of temporal sequences of monocular images. Interpretation consists of dense recovery of 3-D structure and motion from the image sequence spatiotemporal variations due to short-range image motion. The method is direct insomuch as it does not require prior computation of image motion. It allows movement of both viewing system and multiple independently moving objects. The problem is formulated following a variational statement with a functional containing three terms. One term measures the conformity of the interpretation within each region of 3-D motion segmentation to the image sequence spatiotemporal variations. The second term is of regularization of depth. The assumption that environmental objects are rigid accounts automatically for the regularity of 3-D motion within each region of segmentation. The third and last term is for the regularity of segmentation boundaries. Minimization of the functional follows the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations. This results in iterated concurrent computation of 3-D motion segmentation by curve evolution, depth by gradient descent, and 3-D motion by least squares within each region of segmentation. Curve evolution is implemented via level sets for topology independence and numerical stability. This algorithm and its implementation are verified on synthetic and real image sequences. Viewers presented with anaglyphs of stereoscopic images constructed from the algorithm's output reported a strong perception of depth.     

A novel target designed for the calibration of radars

A technique that can be used to calibrate radar cross section (RCS) levels over a wide dynamic range and to establish overall target signature measurement accuracy is presented. It is based on the development of a specially designed calibration target which is characterized by a linear RCS variation with respect to aspect angle. An inverse scattering technique based on geometrical optics approximation is utilized to define the surface of such a target. Design data describing the surface dimension as a function of the specified maximum and minimum RCS values were developed, and the limitations of the design technique were investigated. An engineering test model covering a 35-dB dynamic range was constructed to verify experimentally the design linearity. priliminary results were excellent.