Three-dimensional ultrasonic data smooth and endocardial extraction

This paper presents a new approach for visualizing the surfaces from 3D ultrasound data. 3D ultrasound data usually contain substantial quantity of speckle noise, which makes the extraction of smooth and continuous surfaces extremely difficult. In this paper, combining the partial differential equation model of anisotropic diffusion filter with the Lee filter, we present a new algorithm for handling 3D ultrasound data, aiming to suppress the speckle noise, and meanwhile, smooth the ultrasound image. Additionally, the marching cubes algorithm is applied to extract a smooth endocardial surface. Comparing experiments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach.