An Acoustic Tracking Approach for Medical Ultrasound Image Simulator
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
An Acoustic Tracking Approach for Medical Ultrasound Image Simulator Po-Heng Chen1 • Kai-Sheng Hsieh2 • Chih-Chung Huang1
Received: 11 August 2016 / Accepted: 2 December 2016 Taiwanese Society of Biomedical Engineering 2017
Abstract Ultrasound examinations are a standard procedure in the clinical diagnosis of many diseases. However, the efficacy of an ultrasound examination is highly dependent on the skill and experience of the operator, which has prompted proposals for ultrasound simulation systems to facilitate training and education in hospitals and medical schools. The key technology of the medical ultrasound simulation system is the probe tracking method that is used to determine the position and inclination angle of the sham probe, since this information is used to display the ultrasound images in real time. This study investigated a novel acoustic tracking approach for an ultrasound simulation system that exhibits high sensitivity and is costeffective. Five air-coupled ultrasound elements are arranged as a 1D array in front of a sham probe for transmitting the acoustic signals, and a 5 9 5 2D array of receiving elements is used to receive the acoustic signals from the moving transmitting elements. Since the patterns of the received signals can differ for different positions and angles of the moving probe, the probe can be tracked precisely by the acoustic tracking approach. After the probe position has been determined by the system, the
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s40846-017-0258-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Chih-Chung Huang [email protected] 1
Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, No 1, University Road, Tainan City 70101, Taiwan
2
Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan
corresponding ultrasound image is immediately displayed on the screen. The system performance was verified by scanning three different subjects as image databases: a simple commercial phantom, a complicated self-made phantom, and a porcine heart. The experimental results indicated that the tracking and angle accuracies of the presented acoustic tracking approach were 0.7 mm and 0.5, respectively. The performance of the acoustic tracking approach is compared with those of other tracking technologies. Keywords Ultrasound simulation system Ultrasound examination Acoustic tracking Air-coupled ultrasound transducer
1 Introduction Medical ultrasound examinations have become essential for diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical procedures in hospitals and other clinical environments. An ultrasound system can provide high-resolution cross-section images of the abdomen and its internal organs that are useful in many clinical applications, such as cardiology, obstetrics, and gynecology, as well as of the breast, thyroid, and vascular and musculoskeleta
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