Increasing temporal resolution of 3D transesophageal ultrasound by rigid body registration of sequential, temporally offset sequences

A description of mitral valve function requires both an accurate anatomical description of the three-dimensional (3D) structure as well as a description of the leaflets´ rapid motion. Current two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound imaging is unable to capture the 3D anatomy and 3D imaging suffers from severely reduced temporal resolution. We present a method to utilize two sequential 3D transesophageal echocardiographic (TEE) ultrasound acquisitions with a temporal delay to create a dataset that captures the 3D anatomical description of the valve and has a higher temporal resolution. The enhanced dataset should provide better information for modeling the motion of the mitral vale.