Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Ultrasound Med Biol. 2011 Feb;37(2):271-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2010.10.025. Epub 2011 Jan 5.
We present a novel method of aligning two orthogonal ultrasound transducers into a coincident scan plane. A wedge phantom design provides visual feedback to the user to facilitate alignment. Calibration provides the transformation from one transducer to the other as well as a measure of the residual error in alignment. Mean alignment error is shown to be under 1° in the rotation axes and 1 mm in translation after repeated manual alignments. The repeatability of wedge based calibration has similar results compared with N-fiducial based calibration. The accuracy of the calibration for mapping points from one transducer to the other is found to have a mean error of 1.6 mm. The dual transducer system is well suited to imaging anatomy such as the breast and may be used for spatial compounding for improving B-mode images and motion estimation compounding for improving elastography results.
我们提出了一种将两个正交超声换能器对准重合扫描面的新方法。楔形仿体设计为用户提供了视觉反馈，以方便对准。校准提供了从一个换能器到另一个换能器的变换，以及对准残余误差的度量。经过多次手动对准，旋转轴上的平均对准误差显示在 1°以下，平移误差在 1mm 以下。与基于 N-基准的校准相比，基于楔形的校准具有相似的重复性。将一个换能器上的点映射到另一个换能器的校准精度的平均误差为 1.6mm。双换能器系统非常适合成像乳房等解剖结构，并且可用于空间复合以改善 B 模式图像，以及运动估计复合以改善弹性成像结果。
