title: Sensorless freehand 3D ultrasound in real tissue: speckle decorrelation without fully developed speckle.
abstract: It has previously been demonstrated that freehand 3D ultrasound can be acquired without a position sensor by measuring the elevational speckle decorrelation from frame to frame. However, this requires that the B-scans contain significant amounts of fully developed speckle. In this paper, we show that this condition is rarely satisfied in scans of real tissue, which instead exhibit fairly ubiquitous coherent scattering. By examining the axial and lateral correlation functions, we propose an heuristic technique to quantify the amount of coherency at each point in the B-scans. This leads to an adapted elevational decorrelation scheme which allows for the coherent scattering. Using the adapted scheme, we demonstrate markedly improved reconstructions of animal tissue in vitro.
authors.affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambs CB2 1PZ, UK. ahg@eng.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Andrew H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Gee
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: James Housden
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hassenpflug
authors.forename: Graham M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Treece
authors.forename: Richard W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Prager
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D016477:Artifacts; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008954:Models, Biological; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014159:Transducers; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*