title: A real-time freehand ultrasound calibration system with automatic accuracy feedback and control.
abstract: This article describes a fully automatic, real-time, freehand ultrasound calibration system. The system was designed to be simple and sterilizable, intended for operating-room usage. The calibration system employed an automatic-error-retrieval and accuracy-control mechanism based on a set of ground-truth data. Extensive validations were conducted on a data set of 10,000 images in 50 independent calibration trials to thoroughly investigate the accuracy, robustness, and performance of the calibration system. On average, the calibration accuracy (measured in three-dimensional reconstruction error against a known ground truth) of all 50 trials was 0.66 mm. In addition, the calibration errors converged to submillimeter in 98% of all trials within 12.5 s on average. Overall, the calibration system was able to consistently, efficiently and robustly achieve high calibration accuracy with real-time performance.
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
authors.forename: Thomas Kuiran
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Adrian D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Thurston
authors.forename: Randy E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.forename: Purang
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Abolmaesumi
mesh_terms: D002138:Calibration; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012984:Software; D014159:Transducers; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods