Real-time three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (RT3D-TEE) is increasingly used during minimally invasive cardiac surgeries (MICS). In many cath labs, RT3D-TEE is already one of the requisite tools for image guidance during MICS. However, the visualization of the catheter is not always satisfactory making 3D- TEE challenging to use as the only modality for guidance. We propose a novel technique for better visualization of the catheter along with the cardiac anatomy using TEE alone - exploiting both beamforming and post processing methods. We extended our earlier method called Delay and Standard Deviation (DASD) beamforming to 3D in order to enhance specular reflections. The beam-formed image was further post-processed by the Frangi filter to segment the catheter. Multi-variate visualization techniques enabled us to render both the standard tissue and the DASD beam-formed image on a clinical ultrasound scanner simultaneously. A frame rate of 15 FPS was achieved.

Date Published: 3 March 2017
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 10135, Medical Imaging 2017: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling, 1013518 (3 March 2017);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10135:
Medical Imaging 2017: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling
Robert J. Webster III; Baowei Fei, Editor(s)