Freehand 3D Ultrasound Volume Reconstruction via Sub-Pixel Phase Correlation

3D ultrasound provides clinicians and researchers with more intuitive anatomical visualization as well as accurate volumetric measurements. A novel freehand transducer constructed by Hossack et al. allows for 3D reconstruction of cross-sectional slices through the use of additional tracking arrays. These tracking arrays produce a coplanar image sequence, perpendicular to the cross-sectional slices, from which frame-to-frame motion can be determined. Accurate and precise motion estimation is required for successful volume reconstruction. In this paper we propose a novel volume reconstruction technique for the freehand 3D ultrasound transducer utilizing sub-pixel phase correlation. Using a synthetic data set with known volumetric characteristics, we compare our algorithm to standard correlation techniques.