Tool localization: demonstration for Ultrasonix

Surgical tool localization in ultrasound images is a problem which physicians are facing during insertion of surgical tools such as biopsy needles or electrodes. We propose a real-time demonstration application for automatic localization of such linear tools in 3D ultrasound images which aids the surgeons during intervention. This work is published in [1] and it a part of larger project.

Description

The automatic acquisition starts after clicking 'Run' button, and it proccesses the acquired volumes in real-time. The tool localization method based on model fitting using RANSAC [2] runs automatically simultaneusly during acquisition. The found location of the tool is used to compute two 2D slices from 3D US data: the section plane containing the tool and the plane perpendicular to the tool's axis.

The application can be run in offline mode without Ultrasonix scanner. User can load the sequence of volumes from a file and replay the simulation of acquisition. The results will be shown as during acquisition.

Screenshot of PropelloRANSAC

Screenshot: The axis of the surgical tool is indicated by the red line. Several parameters can be changed from this window and the user can replay the acquisition sequence and tool localization either from the memory or from a file. 1) B-mode image. 2) Section plane. 3) Perpendicular plane.

Technical info

Demonstration application is implemented on the Ultrasonix Sonix RP with 3D probe 4DC7-3/40. It is built from 3D acquisition software Propello which uses Porta library for communication with scanner. The tool localization method is implemented in a separate C++ library. The application is compiled with libraries MFC and GSL for Windows OS. The application is running real-time due to its multi-threading architecture.

Download:

  • Compiled binaries of Demonstration application - ZIP archive [10 MB]
  • Testing sequences - link to directory [56 MB]
    Warning: always download a pair of file *.VOL and *.VOL.EXTINFO
  • There are links for download at our internal webpage.

References:

[1] Fabian Gaufillet, Hervé Liegbott, Marián Uhercik, Fréderic Cervenansky, Jan Kybic, Christian Cachard:
3D Ultrasound real-time monitoring of surgical tools. In Proceedings of International Ultrasonic Symposium. October 2010 [PDF]

[2] Marián Uhercik, Jan Kybic, Hervé Liebgott, Christian Cachard:
Model Fitting using RANSAC for Surgical Tool Localization in 3D Ultrasound Images, IEEE Trans. on Biomed. Eng. (BME), pp. 1907-1916, Aug. 2010 [PDF]