Patent ID: 8622915

Claim:
A computer for use in intracardiac ultrasound imaging, comprising: a data connection for connecting to an ultrasound beamformer circuit; and a processor coupled to the data connection and configured with processor-executable instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations comprising: storing a plurality of ultrasound image frames in memory; storing in memory a rotational orientation of an ultrasound transducer corresponding to each of the plurality of ultrasound image frames; detecting edges of tissue structures within each of the plurality of image frames; determining a spatial location of each of the detected edges in each of the plurality of image frames; statistically analyzing the spatial locations of the detected edges among a subset of the plurality of image frames with an approximately equal transducer rotational orientation to determine representative spatial locations for the tissue structures imaged from the approximately equal transducer rotational orientation; generating a cartoon rendered image frame of the tissue structures based upon the representative spatial locations imaged from the approximately equal transducer rotational orientation; repeating the operations of statistically analyzing the spatial locations of the detected edges and generating cartoon rendered image frames for each of a plurality of approximately equal transducer rotational orientations to generate a plurality of cartoon rendered image frames; and combining the plurality of cartoon rendered image frames using their corresponding approximately equal transducer rotation orientations to generate a three-dimensional cartoon rendering of tissue structure.