High Volume Rate 3D Ultrasound Reconstruction with Diffusion Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Stevens, Tristan S. W., Nolan, Oisín, Somphone, Oudom, Robert, Jean-Luc, van Sloun, Ruud J. G.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Stevens, Tristan S. W.
Nolan, Oisín
Somphone, Oudom
Robert, Jean-Luc
van Sloun, Ruud J. G.
author_facet Stevens, Tristan S. W.
Nolan, Oisín
Somphone, Oudom
Robert, Jean-Luc
van Sloun, Ruud J. G.
contents Three-dimensional ultrasound enables real-time volumetric visualization of anatomical structures. Unlike traditional 2D ultrasound, 3D imaging reduces reliance on precise probe orientation, potentially making ultrasound more accessible to clinicians with varying levels of experience and improving automated measurements and post-exam analysis. However, achieving both high volume rates and high image quality remains a significant challenge. While 3D diverging waves can provide high volume rates, they suffer from limited tissue harmonic generation and increased multipath effects, which degrade image quality. One compromise is to retain focus in elevation while leveraging unfocused diverging waves in the lateral direction to reduce the number of transmissions per elevation plane. Reaching the volume rates achieved by full 3D diverging waves, however, requires dramatically undersampling the number of elevation planes. Subsequently, to render the full volume, simple interpolation techniques are applied. This paper introduces a novel approach to 3D ultrasound reconstruction from a reduced set of elevation planes by employing diffusion models (DMs) to achieve increased spatial and temporal resolution. We compare both traditional and supervised deep learning-based interpolation methods on a 3D cardiac ultrasound dataset. Our results show that DM-based reconstruction consistently outperforms the baselines in image quality and downstream task performance. Additionally, we accelerate inference by leveraging the temporal consistency inherent to ultrasound sequences. Finally, we explore the robustness of the proposed method by exploiting the probabilistic nature of diffusion posterior sampling to quantify reconstruction uncertainty and demonstrate improved recall on out-of-distribution data with synthetic anomalies under strong subsampling.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_22090
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle High Volume Rate 3D Ultrasound Reconstruction with Diffusion Models
Stevens, Tristan S. W.
Nolan, Oisín
Somphone, Oudom
Robert, Jean-Luc
van Sloun, Ruud J. G.
Image and Video Processing
Machine Learning
Three-dimensional ultrasound enables real-time volumetric visualization of anatomical structures. Unlike traditional 2D ultrasound, 3D imaging reduces reliance on precise probe orientation, potentially making ultrasound more accessible to clinicians with varying levels of experience and improving automated measurements and post-exam analysis. However, achieving both high volume rates and high image quality remains a significant challenge. While 3D diverging waves can provide high volume rates, they suffer from limited tissue harmonic generation and increased multipath effects, which degrade image quality. One compromise is to retain focus in elevation while leveraging unfocused diverging waves in the lateral direction to reduce the number of transmissions per elevation plane. Reaching the volume rates achieved by full 3D diverging waves, however, requires dramatically undersampling the number of elevation planes. Subsequently, to render the full volume, simple interpolation techniques are applied. This paper introduces a novel approach to 3D ultrasound reconstruction from a reduced set of elevation planes by employing diffusion models (DMs) to achieve increased spatial and temporal resolution. We compare both traditional and supervised deep learning-based interpolation methods on a 3D cardiac ultrasound dataset. Our results show that DM-based reconstruction consistently outperforms the baselines in image quality and downstream task performance. Additionally, we accelerate inference by leveraging the temporal consistency inherent to ultrasound sequences. Finally, we explore the robustness of the proposed method by exploiting the probabilistic nature of diffusion posterior sampling to quantify reconstruction uncertainty and demonstrate improved recall on out-of-distribution data with synthetic anomalies under strong subsampling.
title High Volume Rate 3D Ultrasound Reconstruction with Diffusion Models
topic Image and Video Processing
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22090