A pilot study on simulation of Ultrasound from MRI using ray-based model

Abstract

Simulation of Ultrasound (US) images from other image modalities like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is playing increasingly important role on education training, image registration applications and minimally invasive procedures. However, the computation speed and implementation is still a great challenge in clinical application. In this paper, we propose a framework of accurate simulation of freehand US images from MRI 3D volumes in real time. The proposed method takes physical phenomena into account by means of the ray-based model, enabling accurate simulation of speckle pattern without any preprocessing. First, we constructed tissue models from MRI scanned information using segmentation and ray-based methods. Second, simulated US image was generated combining reflection, transmission, absorption and speckle pattern. The simulated result is promising with the computation time less than 1s.