Virtamed Ag

Orcun Goksel

Maxim Makhinya

Stefan Tuchschmid

Erika Beudeker

Sebastian Martin

Carolyn O'Brien

Oliver Mattausch

Basil Fierz

Stochastic ray-tracing methods such as Monte-Carlo ray-tracing may be adapted to provide more efficient and more realistic ultrasound imaging systems and methods. Many random ray paths that are perturbed according to a probability distribution may be generated until they converge to the correct solution. New surface thickness and roughness models enable to reproduce complex ultrasound interactions such as multiple reflections and refractions. The contribution of each ray path may be further weighted to better simulate a beamformed ultrasound signal. Tracing many individual rays per transducer element is easily parallelizable on modern GPU computing architectures.

Ray-tracing methods for realistic interactive ultrasound simulation

An ultrasound simulation method for rendering an ultrasound image of an anatomy model, comprises acquiring, with at least one model sensor, a position and/or orientation of the model; acquiring, with at least one probe replicate sensor, a position and/or orientation of an ultrasound imaging probe replicate, the ultrasound imaging probe replicate interacting with low friction with at least one anatomy model surface, the model surface being deformed by the pressure of the ultrasound imaging probe replicate; aligning a VR/AR model to the tracked position and orientation of the anatomy model and the ultrasound imaging probe replicate; interpolating a 2D ultrasound slice by sampling through a standard reconstructed 3D ultrasound volume, as a function of the tracked position and orientation of the anatomy model and the ultrasound imaging probe replicate.

Ultrasound simulation methods

Growing community of inventors

Zurich, Switzerland

Orcun Goksel