Navigated Ultrasound Imaging: 3D Reconstruction of Artery Geometry and Flow

Abstract

Atherosclerosis is a disease in which plaque builds up inside the arteries and causes the arteries to harden and narrow. The diagnosis of atherosclerosis and quantification of the extent of atherosclerosis nowadays depend on conventional two-dimensional (2D) images of the arteries while the plaque progression is in three-dimensions. The main objectives of this thesis are to develop an application software that can realize three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of geometry and blood flow of arteries by using ultrasound images and evaluate the accuracy of the developed application. The method used for reconstruction is free-hand 3D ultrasound imaging with an optical tracker method. The Visualization Toolkit, which is a C++ class library for 3D computer graphics, and Qt which is a framework for creating graphical user interfaces, are utilized to develop the application.Abstract In vivo and in vitro experiments are conducted for evaluation and the results of the experiments and sample 3D reconstructions are presented in the report. The spatial positioning accuracy of the application is found to be 0.36 mm RMS.