Ultrasound Calibration

Mei-Chuan Chen February 10, 2006

Abstract 3D ultrasound(U S) is a imaging technique that has been recognized as a valuable tool for a variety of clinical applications. This article is devoted to review the methods for Ultrasound calibration and aims mainly at the Hopkins Phantom,which introduces a novel method for ultrasound probe calibration based on closed-form formulation and using minimal US imaging allowing for an immediate result. The calibration procedures are mainly search algorithms for the unknown transformation parameters to maximize the similarity between the acquired US images in phantom space and phantom model. Four traditional calibration techniques, cross-wire phantom, three-wire phantom,single-wall phantom,cambridge phantom, whose phantoms are geometrical model based on points and planes, will be introduced and the results will be compared.In addition, a new methodology based on closed-form solution will be described and compared with the traditional to prove that it is a easy and fast to perform.

1 Introduction
True 3D imaging modalities, like MRI and CT, are extremely potent with regard to their rendering capabilities, but are dicult to use for intra-operative procedures, mainly due to obstructive hardware and the latent images. US,however, has been becoming known as a widely popular image guidance modality,since it is real-time,convenient to use in the operation room and inexpensive compared to CT and MRT. In order to provide the physicians with a 3D real-time visualization of the internal anatomy, individual 2D US images must be assembled into 3D volumes and then the position of surgical tools are related with respect to the reconstructed US volume.The goal is to preserve true anatomical shape by means of a consistent reconstruction of 3D volumes Using US as a guidance modality for surgical procedures would require tracking the imaging probe with a magnetic or optical tracking device.A xed transformation between the US beam and the tracking device needs to be determined, so that arbitrary image pixels can be referenced in a global frame.Obtaining this xed transformation is referred to as ultrasound calibration.After calibration, a 3D volume is reconstructed by some surface- or voxel-based method ,and the data is visualized with some appropriate combination of surface extraction, volume rendering, re-slicing, panoramic viewing, or multi-planar techniques.Clearly, the accuracy of calibration is the most signicant factor ,which greatly inuences the quality of the reconstructed volume and visualization. With regard to the currently known calibration processes, an object of known geometrical properties(phantom) is scanned by the tracked US probe and then various mathematical procedures are applied to determine the unknown transformation that maximize the similarity between the US images and the actual phantom.Geometrical model base phantoms like points, plane exist and some studies have compared their accuracy and performance.The cross-wire and three-wire

phantoms require long time of acquisition and are hard to automate, while the single-wall as in Cambridge phantom is automatic repeatable method. Hopkins phantom which is based on using a recent closed-form formulation allows for oine image processing leading to immediate calibration if the simple docking guide mechanism is involved.The basic concept and reconstruction model of ultrasound calibration will be introduced in the section 2.In section 3 and 4,traditional calibration phantoms and Hopkins phantom will be discussed respectively and the experiment results and the comparison between the dierent phantoms will be summarized in section 5.

2 Reconstruction[3]
2.1 Processing
A 3D free-hand examination consists of three stages:scanning, reconstruction and visualization, which is illustrated by gure 1. Before scanning, some sort of position sensor is attached to the probe,which is typically the receiver of an electro-magnetic position sensor.Measurements from the position sensor are used to determine the positions and orientations of the B-scans with respect to the xed transmitter.In the reconstruction-stage, the set of acquired B-scans and their relative positions are used to build a regular voxel array.Finally, the voxel array is visualized using ,for example, volume rendering or surface rendering.

Figure 1: 3D free-hand ultrasound imaging[3]

2.2 Mathematical Formulation

2.2.1 Coordinate systems and Transformation In order to modeling the ultrasound calibration and reconstruction, four coordinate systems are needed, which is showed in gure 2.P is the coordinate system of the B-scan plane.The y-axis is in the beam direction,x-axis in the lateral direction, and z-axis is in the elevational direction, out of the plane of the B-scan.R is the coordinate system of the position sensors receiver,T is the coordinate system of transmitter,and C is the coordinate system of reconstruction volume(phantom coordinates). During reconstruction, each pixel in the B-scan has to be located with respect to the reconstruction volume C by means of the transformation between dierent coordinate systems.First,each pixels scan plane location(Px ) is transformed to the coordinate system of the receiver R, then

to the transmitter Tand nally to the reconstruction volume C.The process is illustrated in the gure 3.

Figure 2: Coordinate systems[6]

Figure 3: Transformation between dierent coordinate systems[3]

2.2.2 Mathematical formulation The overall transformation can be expressed as the multiplication of homogeneous transformation matrices: Cx =C TT T TR R TP Px where Sx u S v Px = y 0 1 The standard notation J TI is adopted, which means the transformation from coordinate system I to coordinate systemJ.u and v are the column and row indices of the pixel in the cropped image,

and Sx and Sy are scale factors with units of mm/pixel.Cx is the pixels location in the coordinate system. A transformation between two coordinate systems has six degrees of freedom:three rotation(, , ) and three translation(x, y, z).The rotation between two coordinate systems is eected by rst rotating through around the x-axis, then through around the y-axis, and nally through around the z-axis.Using this convention,the homogeneous matrix describing the transformation is illustrated in the gure 4.

Figure 4: Transformation matrix [3]

Each of the transformation matrices plays a dierent role in reconstruction.T TR is derived directly from the position sensor readings.C TT is included largely as a matter of convenience. R TP needs to be determined by calibration. The scale factors Sx and Sy could be derived from the axis markings on the B-scan. Once Cx has been found for every pixel, the voxels of C can be set according to the intensities of the pixels they intersect.

3 Traditionall calibration phantoms [3]

In this section, fourtraditionall calibration phantoms are discussed shortly.

3.1 Cross-wire phantom

In the cross-wire phantom,two intersecting wires are mounted in a water bath ,with the transmitter placed at some xed location with respect to the wires, as shown on the left side of gure 5. For the purpose of simplifying the calibration equations ,the origin of C is placed at the intersection of the wires.During scanning, the location where the wires cross is scanned repeatedly from dierent directions(see the B-scan in the middle of gure 5), with each B-scan showing a detectable cross. The pixel at the center of the cross should satisfy the calibration equation, as described in the gure 5. Accuracy of calibration with a point object depends on how well the center of the point can be located, as well as the stationarity of the point with respect to the transmitter.It is common practice to locate the point by hand in each B-scan,making the calibration process time-consuming.

Figure 5: Cross-wire phantom[3]

3.2 Three-wire phantom

In the three-wire phantom, three wires are accurately mounted in orthogonal directions. The coordinate system C is placed at the origin of the wires and orient the x, y, z axes along the wires, as shown in the gure 6. By scanning, each wire is scanned, one at a time,along its length from a variety of directions. The wire appears as a detectable dot in the B-scan, as shown in the gure 6. For the wire along the x-,y-and z-axis, the pixel at the center of the wire should satisfy the calibration equation, as shown in the gure 6. For the accuracy of calibration, it depends on the orthogonality, straightness and stationarity of the wires. The advantage of the three-wire method compared to the cross-wire method is that it is easier to scan a length of wire than to keep the B-scan centered on a crossing point.

Figure 6: Three-wire phantom [3]

3.3 Single-wall phantom

Insteading of building a phantom with some wires, as described with cross-,and three-wire phantom, signal-wall phantom scans the oor of the water bath alone.It is not necessary to construct a special phantom.The accuracy of the calibration depends on the atness and stationarity of the oor.The plane should show up as a strong,straight line in the image,and the line can be detected automatically.If the coordinate system C is dened to lie in the oor of the water bath, with the z-axis orthogonal to the oor,pixels lying on the line should satisfy the calibration equation, as described in the gure 7.

It is proved that the detecting a line in an image is easier than a point in an image and it is possible to locate a straight line even when portions of the line are corrupted or missing.On the contrary, the same cannot be said of dots and crosses.In addition, practically speaking, calibration with wire-based phantoms seems to be done by means of locating the dots by hand.In contrast, automatic line detection algorithm can be applied to the single-wall calibration so that time can be saved to collect the images. One signicant problem of single-wall calibration is caused by the width of the ultrasound beam and the nature of specular reection.When the beam is not normal to the wall, the rst echo to return to the probe comes from the edge of the beam closest to the wall, as shown in the gure 8(b).In gure 8, point B is encountered by the ultrasound pulse before point A on the centerline.The echo from B produces a response in the image which does not reect the true position of the wall.

Figure 7: Single-wall calibration[3]

Figure 8: Minimal sequence of motions and beam thickness problem in single-wall calibration[3]

3.4 Cambridge phantom

Cambridge phantom is designed to overcome the diculties experienced with planar calibration, as discussed previously. The phantom consists of two parts:a clamp that xes around the probe and a thin brass bar mounted between two circular disks,as shown in the gure 9.The idea is that the clamp constrains the thin bar to move only in the center of the ultrasound beam. The calibration procedure may be summarized as follows:

 Insert ultrasound probe into clamp and tighten bolts so that the slots through the two sides of the clamp are aligned with the scan plane of the probe. Immerse the phantom in water,slot the clamp over the bar,and scan the bar with the probe from all possible angles.A clear image of the bar will always be visible in the B-scan Because of the clarity of the images and the fact that the phantom produces a line in the B-scan,it is possible to automatically detect the line in each B-scan. Once these lines have been located, calibration proceeds is exactly the same as that for single-wall phantom. Accurate calibration requires a minimal sequence of motions,as shown in the gure 9.The procedure is fully automated and takes less than ve minutes to complete,including scanning, line detection and optimization.It is not possible for the wired-based techniques to do the calibration so fast, since the dots need to be located by hand in each image. The B-scan images from the traditional calibration phantoms are shown in the gure 10 together.

Figure 9: Cambridge phantom [3]

Figure 10: Typical B-scans of traditional calibration phantoms[3]

4 Hopkins phantom[1][2][4][5]
With regard to Hopkins phantom,a position sensor is attached to the probe for tagging each image/volume with its position and orientation in space.The traditional US calibration framework in gure 3 is integrated into the AX = XB framework as in gure 11, using a recent closed form solution for the AX = XB problem.It uses minimal US imaging allowing for an immediate result. In this section, the original idea will be rst discussed, and then the mathematical formulation of this model.Finally ,the experiment,calibration setup and protocol, will be described and summarized.

4.1 Idea
The closed form solution comes originally from a basic issue, which is to determine the spatial relationship between a camera mounted into a robot end-eector.This spatial relationship is a rigid transformation, that is, a rotation and a translation, known as the hand-eye transformation. A classical approach (Tsai and Lenz 1989;Chen 1991;Daniilidis and Bayro-Corrochano 1996; Horaud and Dornaika 1995; Shiu and Ahmad 1989; Chou and Kamel 1991; Wang 1992) states that when the camera undergoes a motion A = (Ra , ta ) and the corresponding end-eector motion is B = (Rb , tb ), then they are conjugated by the hand-eye transformation X = (Rx , tx ) (Fig. 2). This yields the following homogeneous matrix equation: AX = XB,where A is estimated, B is assumed to be known, and X is the unknown.This is illustrated in the gure 11(b).

4.2 Mathematical Formulation

From the gure 11(a)and (b),the spatial relationship between camera and gripper is applied to the spatial relationship between the coordinate system R and P, and the camera motions is simulated by the motions of ultrasound probe in the Hopkins phantom.For the camera-robot model, several motions might be need to do the calibration, as shown in gure 11 (c).However, the Hopkins phantom shows that only two motions of US probe is sucient for getting the good results of calibration. In the Figure 11 (a),A1 , A2 are the transformations of US image coordinate system P with respect to the reconstruction coordinate system C at poses 1 and 2,respectively.Using A1 , A2 ,the transformation between poses 1 and 2 is obtained, as A = A2 A1 . B1 , B2 are the tracking device 1 readings for the sensor frame R with respect to tracker reference frame T at poses 1 and 2,which 1 is given by B = B2 B1 .Therefore,according the hand-eye calibration,as described previously, it yields the homogeneous matrix equation:AX = XB.Where A is estimated from images, B is assumed to be known from the external tracking device,and X is the unknown transformation between the US images coordinate system and the sensor frame.

Figure 11: AX=XB method in the Hopkins Calibration and hand-eye calibration[1][5]

The estimated US image frame motion is given by A (),as described in the gure 12,where Ra is the rotation of US image frame between pose 1 and 2 and is the unknown scale factor vector that relates the translation vector ua in voxel space to US image frame translation vector ta (in mm). Using AX = XB and the equations from the gure 12,the result that is computed in the gure 12 is obtained.The gure 13 illustrates only the left side of AX = XB,and the right side is computed by means of the same calculation.According the result of grue 13, the rotation equation and translation equation are obtained.

Figure 12: Mathematical formulation(1)[1]

Figure 13: Mathematical formulation(2) What we will do next step is to reduce the nonlinear model to linear formulation. A new formulation,Sylvester equation: UX + XW = T, that is very similar to the homogeneous equation AX = XB is inspired and Hussein et al. proved that Sylvester equation is usually formulated as a linear system by means of the Kronecker product: (U I + I W ) vec (V ) = vec (T ) (1)

The computation process how the property of Kronecker product applies to our model is described in the gure 14.Finally, Andre et. al[5] proved that two independent motions with non-parallel axes is sucient to recover a unique solution for AX = XB.

Figure 14: Mathematical formulation(3)

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4.3 Calibration setup and protocol

4.3.1 Calibration phantom Calibration phantom consists of three identical thin(4mm) plastic plates of irregular shape,and then is submerged in a transparent plastic water tank. For the scanning,SONOLINE Antares US scanner(Siemens Medical Solutions ,USA) with a Siemens VF 10-5 linear array probe Held in a rigid attachment mounted on an adjustable arm is used, as shown in the gure 15 (a). The plastic plates are machined together to ensure their congruency and then they are positioned and xed on a at surface using Lego blocks, as shown in the gure 15 (b).

Figure 15: Hopkins phantom[1]

4.3.2 Images acquisition For the images acquisition, an optical pointer pivoted to obtain an accurate estimate of the desired 3D point is used to collect 3D points of each of the plates for oine processing. Figure 16 presents that 3D points are rst registered to provide a local coordinate system for each thin plates,and then the relative transformations between each pair of plates can be calculate from the local coordinate systems.What important is that the poses of the three plates should be arranged carefully to give the optimal results for the two motions required by AX = XB,based on previous experiments.

Figure 16: Process for acquiring images[1]

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4.3.3 US probe calibration By calibrating, A1 , A2 have to be estimated by means of the method discussed in the paragraph Images acquisition.That is,A1 and A2 transformation matrices are the relative transformations between the plates of the calibration phantom with a positional oset based on the pixel coordinates of the phantom in the acquired US image.Two protocols are tested for computing A1 and A2 matrices: Move the US tracked probe such that the probe is parallel to the thin plate and the image plane of US images shows the middle of the thin plate. Apply the same protocol, but collect multiple tracking data from one end of the thin plate to the other end and using an averaging technique to nd the center of the thin plate. The result of scanning can be seen in the gure 15 (b).It yields sharp US images that can even be processed automatically.Three sets of tracking and US image data are sucient to solve the mathematical formulation,and an additional 3 sets of data(48 datasets) will ensure a wellconditioned problem and produce comparable results to previous calibration.

5 Experiment,results and comparison

5.1 Methods and results
Two dierent sets of experiments have been designed to test the calibration technique.The rst set of experiments use synthetic data ,and the second set of experiments use real ultrasound sequences. Simulation data is generated to test the numerical stability of the closed form formulation, and articial noise is added to the data points in order to mimic the error of the tracker and account for the eects of ultrasound image properties. The table in the gure 17(a) shows the average error and standard deviation of the recovered translation vector for dierent calibration sequences.The sequences are generated using synthetic data with added noise of dierent levels. Gathered data using a tracked ultrasound probe are acquired to check the repeatability of the calibration setup.Real US data was acquired in 2 poses for each of the calibration plates.The algorithm was tested on 48 unique combinations of 6 dierent poses (two poses per plate).The result was shown in the gure 17(b).The standard deviation reects the repeatability of this method. Right after the data collection, the calibration algorithm executes almost immediately.The major source of expected error stems from the misalignment of the ultrasound probe to the plane of the thin plate. In order to avoid this error, a planned docking station will be developed, as shown in the gure 18.According to the reference 5, when the probe is held in a docking attachment, the US images need to be collected and processed only once during the lifetime of the probe.

5.2 Comparison with the other Techniques

Figure 19 shows the comparison of reconstruction precision and accuracy between the traditional calibration phantoms and the Hopkins phantom. The mean point reconstruction precision of Hopkins phantom is higher than the traditional calibration phantoms signicantly. For thetraditionall calibration phantoms, Cambridge phantom shows the better calibration result than the others.For example, Cambridge phantom got less root mean square error than the others. In summary, cross-wire and three-wire phantoms require long time of acquisition,typically four to ve hours, because of the segmentation of points by hand.They suer from relatively poor repeatability. In contrast, single-wall phantom and Cambridge phantom is automatic repeatable method,since the lines they produce in the B-scan can be detected reliably and automatically using

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Figure 17: Results of calibration [1]

Figure 18: Docking station[1] the line detection algorithm. It speeds up the calibration process greatly.The performance of the Cambridge phantom was signicantly better than any of the other methods, while calibration was performed in a matter of minutes (less than ve minutes). Compared to the traditional calibration phantoms, Hopkins phantom indicate signicant potential in using a simple calibration phantom in conjunction with the AX = XB closed form formulation. It uses optical digitization with a calibrated pointer to replace with a great extent the traditional segmentation of points/planes in US images.The tracked pointer appeared to introduce signicantly less error than the resolution of the US image caused in the traditional approaches.It also provided very accurate calibration results using signicantly fewer US images and requires only minimal image segmentation.

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Figure 19: Comparison between dierent calibration phantoms[6]

References
[1] Emad Boctor, Anand Viswanathan, Michael Choti, Russell H. Taylor, Gabor Fichtinger, Gregory Hager, A novel closed form solution for ultrasound calibration, IEEE Int Symp. On Biomedical Imaging, 2004 [2] Emad Boctor, Anand Viswanathan, Michael Choti, Russell H. Taylor, Gabor Fichtinger, and Gregory Hager,A Novel Closed Form Solution for Ultrasound Calibration, IEEE Int Symp. On Biomedical Imaging, 2004 [3] R. W. Prager, Rohling R. N., Gee A. H., and Berman L.,Rapid Calibration for 3-D Freehand Ultrasound, US in Med. Biol., 24(6):855-869, 1998. [4] John W. Brewer, Kronecker Products and Matrix Calculus in System Theory, IEEE Trans. Circuits and systems, 25(9) Sep.1978. [5] Nicolas Andre and Radu Horaud and Bernard Espiau,Robot Hand-Eye Calibration Using Structure from Motion, International J. of Robotics Research, 20(3), pp 228-248, 2001. [6] Laurence Mercier, Thomas Lang, Frank Linkseth,and D.Louis Collins,A Review Of Calibration Techniques For Freehand 3-D Ultrasound Systems, Ultrasound in Med. & Biol., Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 449 471, 2005.

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