3D Ultrasound Volume Stitching Using Phase Symmetry and Harris Corner Detection for Orthopaedic Applications

Stitching of volumes obtained from three dimensional (3D) ultrasound (US) scanners improves visualization of anatomy in many clinical applications. Fast but accurate volume registration remains the key challenge in this area. We propose a volume stitching method based on efficient registration of 3D US volumes obtained from a tracked US probe. Since the volumes, after adjusting for probe motion, are coarsely registered, we obtain salient correspondence points in the central slices of these volumes. This is done by first removing artifacts in the US slices using intensity invariant local phase image processing and then applying the Harris Corner detection algorithm. Fast sub-volume registration on a small neighborhood around the points then gives fast, accurate 3D registration parameters. The method has been tested on 3D US scans of phantom and real human radius and pelvis bones and a phantom human fetus. The method has also been compared to volumetric registration, as well as feature based registration using 3D-SIFT. Quantitative results show average post-registration error of 0.33mm which is comparable to volumetric registration accuracy (0.31mm) and much better than 3D-SIFT based registration which failed to register the volumes. The proposed method was also much faster than volumetric registration (similar to 4.5 seconds versus 83 seconds).