US 11,911,223 B2
Image based ultrasound probe calibration
Hubert Götte, Munich (DE); Alfredo Guillermo Illanes Manríquez, Magdeburg (DE); Michael Friebe, Magdeburg (DE); Sathish Balakrishnan, Magdeburg (DE); and Prabal Poudel, Magdeburg (DE)
Assigned to Brainlab AG, Munich (DE)
Appl. No. 16/985,493
Filed by Brainlab AG, Munich (DE)
PCT Filed Feb. 23, 2018, PCT No. PCT/EP2018/054524
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Aug. 5, 2020,
PCT Pub. No. WO2019/161914, PCT Pub. Date Aug. 29, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2021/0045719 A1, Feb. 18, 2021
Int. Cl. A61B 8/00 (2006.01); A61B 90/00 (2016.01)
CPC A61B 8/58 (2013.01) [A61B 8/4245 (2013.01); A61B 8/463 (2013.01); A61B 90/39 (2016.02); A61B 2090/3925 (2016.02)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method of assisting in calibrating an ultrasound probe, comprising:
acquiring image position data, describing a spatial transformation between a spatial position of ultrasound images acquired by the ultrasound probe and at least one of: a tracked spatial position of the ultrasound probe as determined via a medical tracking system and a spatial position of a housing of the ultrasound probe;
acquiring first image data, describing a first two-dimensional ultrasound image displaying a structure in a first image plane;
acquiring second image data, describing a second two-dimensional ultrasound image displaying the structure in a second image plane intersecting with the first image plane along an intersection line;
determining first intersection data based on the first image data and based on the spatial transformation described by the image position data, wherein the first intersection data describes image content of the first two-dimensional ultrasound image within a first linear intersection set of pixels along the intersection line that is defined by the intersecting first and second image planes;
determining second intersection data based on the second image data and based on the spatial transformation described by the image position data, wherein the second intersection data describes image content of the second two-dimensional ultrasound image within a second linear intersection set of pixels along the intersection line; and
determining similarity data based on the first intersection data and the second intersection data,
wherein the similarity data describes a grade of similarity between the image content of the first two-dimensional ultrasound image within the first linear intersection set of pixels and the image content of the second two-dimensional ultrasound image within the second linear intersection set of pixels.