PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | March 26, 2011
Proc. SPIE. 7968, Medical Imaging 2011: Ultrasonic Imaging, Tomography, and Therapy
KEYWORDS: Image fusion, 3D acquisition, Visualization, Tissues, Ultrasonography, Image segmentation, Heart, Transducers, Echocardiography, 3D image processing
Surgical procedures often have the unfortunate side-effect of causing the patient significant trauma while accessing
the target site. Indeed, in some cases the trauma inflicted on the patient during access to the target greatly
exceeds that caused by performing the therapy. Heart disease has traditionally been treated surgically using
open chest techniques with the patient being placed "on pump" - i.e. their circulation being maintained by
a cardio-pulmonary bypass or "heart-lung" machine. Recently, techniques have been developed for performing
minimally invasive interventions on the heart, obviating the formerly invasive procedures. These new approaches
rely on pre-operative images, combined with real-time images acquired during the procedure. Our approach
is to register intra-operative images to the patient, and use a navigation system that combines intra-operative
ultrasound with virtual models of instrumentation that has been introduced into the chamber through the heart
wall. This paper illustrates the problems associated with traditional ultrasound guidance, and reviews the state
of the art in real-time 3D cardiac ultrasound technology. In addition, it discusses the implementation of an image-guided
intervention platform that integrates real-time ultrasound with a virtual reality environment, bringing
together the pre-operative anatomy derived from MRI or CT, representations of tracked instrumentation inside
the heart chamber, and the intra-operatively acquired ultrasound images.
