Research Groups

This multidisciplinary group is interested in all aspects of research of burn trauma treatment. A collaborative project with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Western Australia investigates the use of 3D ultrasound as a basis for an objective scar assessment system, as well as a registration tool for dynamic anatomical and physiological data.

The group researches all aspects of ultrasound imaging and have come up, amongst other things, with a pseudo 3D ultrasound imaging method which is possible with a conventional B-mode transducer without any specialised computer equipment.

The group currently has a number of projects in the area. They have recently released a version of their 3D ultrasound aquisition software Stradx that runs under Irix 6.2 on SGI machines using a standard 2D ultrasound machine and an electromagnetic position/orientation sensor (Ascension Technology Corp. or Polhemus devices).

• The SOLUS-3D project is focused on the development of visualisation and measurement techniques based on three dimensional diagnostic ultrasound. It is funded by the European Commission Biomedicine & Health Research Programme.

• The objectives of the Stradivarius Project are to establish a working system for the acquisition, processing and visualisation of three dimensional ultrasound data in a clinical environment.

Have a look at Jonathan Carr's home page for many examples of 3D surfaces reconstruced from ultrasound data including demos and movies of his algorithms in action.

The group has been involved with 3D ultrasound research for many years and are particularly interested in fetal, intravascular and liver studies. Take a look at the recent 3D fetal research for some impressive images and animations of the fetal heart.

Echocard3D is a joint project among several institutions. Its aim is " to develop a complete system for data acquisition and reconstruction of the human heart in a clinical environment. The system is using an echocardiograph, a robot piloting the probe and informatic resources. Processing of the data is providing both visualisation of the heart structures in 3D and very useful measurements for ventricular function."

The Department of Cognitive Computing and Medical Imaging is interested in visualisation of 3D Ultrasound and other imaging modalities.

• The group has developed InViVo (Interactive Visualizer of Volume Data), a very sophisticated software package for visualising fuzzy 3D data, like ultrasound, which implements many techniques developed by this group. InViVo has now grown to encompass a whole family of independent software modules, which include data aquisition/instrument calibration, data visualisation, and currently being developed, data analysis/high-level visualisation tools and telecommunication modules.

• The group is a member of the ESPRIT project consortium. The goal of the project is to offer a 3D ultrasound system suitable for routine clinical applications. The objective of the project proposal is to combine parallel computing power, efficient visualisation software and a 3D ultrasound acquisition device into a standalone system with unmatched performance.

The group headed by Prof. J. M. Thijssen is interested in all aspects of medical ultrasound. In the 3D area they are interested in applications to pediatric cardiology. The group has developed two excellent software packages which are available freely:

• OLIMPUS - On-Line Image Processing of Ultrasound Scans. A package for acquisition, storage and manipulation of ultrasound images. Features include correction of images for echo-scanner dependencies, tissue attenuation, segmentation by second order texture characteristics etc. The basic system runs on SUN Sparc under Solaris. A PC based Linux version is also available.

• SIMPLAN - Simulation of echographic imaging with sequential and parallel computing. Excellent piece of software with modules available for simulation of most types of echo-scanner and transducer types, tissue phantoms and filters. This is the software you want to get quantitative results on any ultrasound processing techniques! The software currently runs on SUN Sparc under Solaris.

This group is interested in all aspects of computer vision and imaging including medical imaging. They have made large contributions to these areas, especially in the area of multiresolution/scale-space techniques. In the area of 3D ultrasound they are reasearching 3D visualisation of vessel lumen.

Prof. Sverre Holm heads the signal processing group which is interested in ultrasound - specifically beamforming of 2D sparce arrays for real-time 3D ultrasound imaging. He also is resposible for UIO's part of the ESPRIT consortium project Real-time 3D Ultrasound Imaging System with Advanced Transducer Arrays which aims to lay the foundation of a 3D ultrasound imaging system where the emphasis is on real-time data acquisition and near real-time data visualization.

Prof. Bjoern Olstad and his team researches all aspects of ultrasound imaging and have developed numerous techniques for noise suppression, feature extraction and rendering of 3D ultrasound data.

The group has developed a Windows 95/NT based system for acquisition of ultrasound images, storage and manipulation of a patient database, and synthesis and segmentation of 3D data.

The group under the direction of Dr. Aaron Fenster has recently been developing new ultrasound technology that can reduce a prostate exam from 20 minutes to about 60 seconds and gather enough information to create a 3-D image of the whole gland on a regular personal computer. A similar system has been developed for the eye, allowing opthalmologists a 3D view of the eye.

The Ultrasound Research Laboratory is interested in all aspects of ultrasonic biophysics. In the field of 3D ultrasound (and 4D ie. volume series through time) the group is particularly interested in echocardiography.

The laboratory is a part of the US Department of Energy. The Medical Technology group has several projects in the 3D-US area:

1. 3-D Ultrasonic Imaging of Battlefield Injuries: Advanced Imaging Systems

2. 3D Medical Imaging in a Virtual Environment

3. 3D Visualization of Fetal Ultrasound

Center for Image Processing and Integrated Compution is interested in flow detection in small vessels with high resolution both in time and velocity, and mapping these vessels in three dimensions using ultrasound. An application is in determination of vasculature of breast cancer tumors.

The 3D Ultrasound Imaging Group has been very active in using both conventional and Doppler ultrasound for medical visualisation, especially of fetal anatomy. The group has published many papers in medical journals about the use of 3DUS in practice.

The group studies all aspects of human speech. They use ultrasound to build 3D images of the tongue.

Amongst extensive ultrasound research the group has applied 3D technology to acquire and visualise of ultrasound breast scans. An MPEG animation of the visualisation is available.

The group has been active in the area of 3D ultrasound for a number of years. Their main interest is the use of Augmented Reality as a tool for all types of medical applications.
They are currently working on extending their work on an augmented reality 3D ultrasound to an ultrasound guided breast biopsy system.

The 3D and 4D Imaging project has some very interesting applications in sonoelastography and fusion of 3D ultrasound and MRI data.

Dr. Ross T. Whitaker is very active in research of geometry limited diffusion and active blobs for volumetric data analysis. He has applied his techniques to 3D ultrasound data.

Three-Dimensional Ultrasonic Angiography and Ultrasound Image Segmentation (using active blobs) are just two of this group's projects. The group is also cooperating with Siemens Ultrasound to bring high powered image processing to the ultrasound market.