Four-dimensional (4D) ultrasound reconstruction can greatly extend the spatial and temporal range of two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound in clinical practice. However, uneven breaths may yield a considerable motion artifact in the reconstructed time sequences of volume ultrasound. In this paper, a system with sparse respiratory signal matching is proposed to realize accurate 4D ultrasound reconstruction by effectively estimating uneven breaths. A slippery platform is built to automatically control the ultrasonic probe for acquiring 2D ultrasound slice sequences in different abdominal areas. Based on these acquired sequences, the signals of the respiratory phases are first extracted. Second, the sparse matched signal pairs are determined through the signal distribution and the corresponding image connectivity. After matching is conducted, signals in different positions are aligned in a common space wherein the outliers of the signals caused by the uneven breaths are excluded. Third, images with the same signal value in different positions are collected as the 3D image at the phase corresponding to the signal, and the 3D images at different phases are employed to reconstruct the final 4D image. The accuracies of the reconstructed 4D image are evaluated and compared with those of five existing methods. Experimental results demonstrate that the spatial and temporal continuities of the 4D ultrasound image reconstructed by our method outperform those obtained by other methods.

中文翻译：

---

具有稀疏呼吸信号匹配的四维广域超声重建系统

二维（4D）超声重建可在临床实践中极大地扩展二维（2D）超声的空间和时间范围。但是，不均匀的呼吸可能会在体积超声的重建时间序列中产生相当大的运动伪影。在本文中，提出了一种具有稀疏呼吸信号匹配的系统，以通过有效估计呼吸不均匀来实现精确的4D超声重建。内置的滑动平台可自动控制超声探头，以获取不同腹部区域的2D超声切片序列。基于这些获取的序列，首先提取呼吸阶段的信号。其次，通过信号分布和相应的图像连通性确定稀疏匹配的信号对。进行匹配后，不同位置的信号在公共空间中对齐，其中排除了因呼吸不均匀而导致的信号离群值。第三，在与信号相对应的相位处在不同位置处具有相同信号值的图像被收集为3D图像，并且在不同相位处使用3D图像来重构最终的4D图像。评估重建的4D图像的准确性，并将其与五种现有方法的准确性进行比较。实验结果表明，通过我们的方法重建的4D超声图像的时空连续性优于通过其他方法获得的时空连续性。在对应于信号的相位处在不同位置处具有相同信号值的图像被收集为3D图像，并且在不同相位处使用3D图像来重构最终的4D图像。评估重建的4D图像的准确性，并将其与五种现有方法的准确性进行比较。实验结果表明，通过我们的方法重建的4D超声图像的时空连续性优于通过其他方法获得的时空连续性。在对应于信号的相位处在不同位置处具有相同信号值的图像被收集为3D图像，并且在不同相位处使用3D图像来重构最终的4D图像。评估重建的4D图像的准确性，并将其与五种现有方法的准确性进行比较。实验结果表明，通过我们的方法重建的4D超声图像的时空连续性优于通过其他方法获得的时空连续性。