Abstract
4D ultrasound is one of the most advancing visualization techniques of the ultrasound dataset. it is subdivided into main five visualization modes volume render, maximum, minimum, mean, and the surface render. The surface render visualization mode is the most realistic mode among the five modes of visualizing the ultrasound 3D dataset.
We enhance the rendered image quality of the surface render mode by enhancing the pre-processing of the 2D ultrasound image.
Surface render is subdivided into four major stages, 2D image pre-processing, volume render with surface detection, surface shading and finally post-processing. Surface render mode gives a low rendered image quality because of the speckle noise nature of the ultrasound, which is the reason for the coherent nature of the ultrasound imaging. And so, pre-processing of the 2D image is needed to remove the speckle noise keeping and enhancing the surface edges.
Our processing meets the Three major challenges which must be concerned when designing the pre-processing of the 2D ultrasound image. Firstly, robustly smooth the speckle noise. Secondly, preserves and enhances the organs edges. and finally, the time constrains must be met that is because of this processing is part of many intensive processing stages. in addition, the processing implemented on the current GPUs platform, which shows a very high processing power with significant low coast value.
A recent review of the literature, on this topic found that, a vast publication in the area of the 4D rendering pipeline [1] and 2D image enhancement each separately, despite this interest, no one to the best of our knowledge has studied the suitable 2D image pre-processing to get the best 4D data visualization [2], considering the nature of the ultrasound image [3] and the time constrains of the ultrasound physics.
Our processing is a merge between local statistics and non-linear filters. It guarantees the required suitable quality of the 2D ultrasound image and performance constrains.