Visualization of 3D ultrasonic data

3D ultrasound is one of the most interesting non-invasive, non-radiative tomographic techniques. Rendering 3D models from such data is not straightforward due to the noisy, fuzzy nature of ultrasound imaging containing a lot of artefacts. We first apply speckle, median and gaussian prefiltering to improve the image quality. Using several semi-automatic segmentation tools we isolate interesting features within a few minutes. Our improved surface-extraction procedure enables volume rendering of high quality within a few seconds on a normal workstation, thus making the complete system suitable for routine clinical applications.<>