REAL-TIME VISUALIZATION OF ARBITRARY 2-DIMENSIONAL SECTIONS FROM 3-DIMENSIONAL ACQUISITION

This work presents a system for the reconstruction of cross-sections w ith arbitrary orientations derived from three-dimensional (3D) echogra phic scanners. The interest for this powerful diagnostic tool has prom pted us to develop a low-cost processing board that inserts easily int o a stand-alone echograph. The proposed system is able to reconstruct high-resolution cross-sections at one frame per second with a time lag of about 60 s due the 3D acquisition process. The board, based on thr ee pipelined DSP devices, has been designed to process volumetric data collected with a commercial echograph by means a rotating probe synch ronized with the ECG signal. The resolution of the reconstruction algo rithm implemented on the processing unit has been evaluated both with synthetic 3D data and with experimental data from a phantom.