Automatic spatial calibration of freehand ultrasound probe with a multilayer N-wire phantom

Chan Wu, Tianyu Fu*, Xinyu Chen, Jian Xiao, Danni Ai, Jingfan Fan, Yucong Lin, Hong Song, Jian Yang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The classic N-wire phantom has been widely used in the calibration of freehand ultrasound probes. One of the main challenges of the phantom is accurately identifying N-fiducials in ultrasound images, especially with multiple N-wire structures. In this study, a method using a multilayer N-wire phantom for the automatic spatial calibration of ultrasound images is proposed. All dots in the ultrasound image are segmented, scored, and classified according to the unique geometric features of the multilayer N-wire phantom. A recognition method for identifying N-fiducials from the dots is proposed for calibrating the spatial transformation of the ultrasound probe. At depths of 9, 11, 13, and 15 cm, the reconstruction error of 50 points is 1.24 ± 0.16, 1.09 ± 0.06, 0.95 ± 0.08, 1.02 ± 0.05 mm, respectively. The reconstruction mockup test shows that the distance accuracy is 1.11 ± 0.82 mm at a depth of 15 cm.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106862
JournalUltrasonics
Volume128
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

Keywords

  • Calibration
  • Multilayer
  • N-wire phantom
  • Ultrasound

Cite this