Automatic Image-based Gating for 4D Ultrasound

Four-dimensional (4D) ultrasound can be a powerful tool in adult and fetal echocardiography, enabling physicians to visualize planes that are not easily accessible using 2D ultrasound. However, despite the advances in the transducer technology, gating is still required to avoid motion artifacts during acquisition using mechanical probes or even 2D matrix array transducers in case of extended volume or color Doppler acquisitions. In fetal echocardiography, where an ECG signal is not readily available, image gating is used, which can both be computationally expensive and/or require user interaction. We present a new image gating technique that has both low computational requirements and is fully automatic. It is not only suitable for real-time gating of 4D ultrasound data sets during acquisition, but also suits well for lower-cost systems where computing resources are at a premium