Surgical Tool Localization in 3D Ultrasound Images

Marián Uherčík^1,2, Jan Kybic¹, Hervé Liebgott² , Christian Cachard², Martin Barva^1,2,Jean-Martial Mari², Václav Hlaváč¹
¹ CMP, Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic ² CREATIS, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, Lyon, France

Motivation

Small instruments are often introduced into the body:

Needle aspiration biopsy (Figure 1a).
Neuronal cortical recording (Figure 1b).
Prostate brachytherapy.
Laparoscopic surgery.

Tracking of needle/electrode inside biological tissue is important to navigation of the instrument into a specific tissue region.


(a)	(b)

Figure 1 - Examples of clinical applications where needle/electrode is introduced into biological tissue.

Problem description

The shape of tool is cylindrical of diameter around 1 mm. The task is to determine the 3D tool position.

Input:

3D volume of gray-level intensities.
Radio-frequency (RF) data.

Difficulties:

Speckle noise.
Irregular appearance of the tool.
The tool can be slightly bended.
Large volume datasets.

Figure 2 - An example of a slice of 3D ultrasound data containing the biopsy needle in biological tissue (breast biopsy).

Proposed Methods

Tool localization is decomposed in two subtasks:

Localization of tool axis:

Method I -- Parallel Integral Projection Transform.
Method II -- RANSAC-based model fitting.

Tool tip localization.

Poster (PDF)

Web Presentation

(works only in Internet Explorer and Opera)

Results

Figure 3a - 3D ultrasound image of PVA cryogel phantom submerged in water. Inside the phantom there was a tungsten electrode. Figure 3b - Red line-segment represents estimated electrode position - the result of tool localization algorithm.

Results on real data:

Comparison of localization algorithms:

Method

Time [sec]

Axis ac. [mm]

Tip ac. [mm]

MR PIP

7.8

2.143 ± 1.63

13.89

RANSAC

0.27

0.94 ± 0.59

1.508

MR PIP = Multi-resolution

RANSAC = RANdom SAmple Consensus

Figure 4 - 3D view of data from breast biopsy with a localized needle marked by green color line.

Publications

Martin Barva, Uherčík Marián, Jean-Martial Mari, Jean-Martial Mari, Jan Kybic, Jean-Rene Duhamel, Herve Liebgott, Vaclav Hlavac, Christian Cachard: Parallel Integral Projection Transform for Straight Electrode Localization in 3D Ultrasound Images, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (UFFC), pp. 1559-1569, July 2008 - [ PDF ]
Martin Barva, Jan Kybic, Jean-Martial Mari, Christian Cachard, and Vaclac Hlavac. Automatic localization of curvilinear object in 3D ultrasound images. In William F. Walker and Stanislav Y. Emelianov, editors, Medical Imaging 2005: Ultrasonic Imaging and Signal Processing, volume 6 of Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging, pages 455-462, San Diego, California, USA, July 2005. SPIE. [ BIB ] [ PDF ] [ Poster ]
Martin Barva, Jan Kybic, Jean-Martial Mari, and Christian Cachard. Radial Radon transform dedicated to micro-object localization from radio frequency ultrasound signal. In Marjorie Passini Yuhas, editor, IEEE UFFC: Proceedings of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, pages 1836–1839, Montreal, Canada, August 2004. [ BIB ] [ PDF ] [ Poster ]
Martin Barva, Jean-Martial Mari, Jan Kybic, and Christian Cachard. Radial Radon transform for electrode localization in biological tissue. In Jiri Jan, Jiri Kozumplik, and Ivo Provaznik, editors, BIOSIGNAL: Analysis of Biomedical Signals and Images, pages 299–301, Brno, Czech Republic, June 2004. EURASIP, VUTIUM Press. [ BIB ] [ PDF] ] [ Poster ]
Uherčík Marián, Jan Kybic, Herve Liebgott, Christian Cachard: Multi-resolution Parallel Integral Projection for Fast Localization of a Straight Electrode in 3D Ultrasound Images, IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), pp. 33-36, May 2008 in Paris - [ PDF, Poster ]
Marián Uherčík, Hervé Liebgott, Jan Kybic, Christian Cachard: Needle localization methods in 3D ultrasound data, International Congress on Ultrasonics (ICU), Santiago de Chile, January 2009 - [ PDF ]
Marián Uherčík, Jan Kybic, Christian Cachard, Hervé Liebgott: Line filtering for detection of microtools in 3D ultrasound data, 2009 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS), In print, September 2009 in Roma - [ PDF ]
Demonstration application for Tool Localization in 3D Ultrasound Images [ Web link ]


Figure 3a - 3D ultrasound image of PVA cryogel phantom submerged in water. Inside the phantom there was a tungsten electrode.	Figure 3b - Red line-segment represents estimated electrode position - the result of tool localization algorithm.