Patent Document ID: 8734349
Application ID: 12740004
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for quantitative 3D contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) analysis, comprising: acquiring ( 54 ) an initial ultrasound contrast image and an initial tissue image pair for a desired portion of a given anatomy; establishing ( 56 ) one of a region of interest (ROI) or volume of interest (VOI) in the acquired initial tissue image, wherein the corresponding tissue image becomes a baseline tissue image; automatically registering ( 58 ) the established ROI or VOI from the initial tissue image to the initial contrast image, wherein the corresponding contrast image becomes a baseline contrast image; performing quantitative analysis ( 60 ) on the ROI or VOI of the baseline contrast image; acquiring ( 62 ) a next ultrasound contrast image and tissue image pair, corresponding to an i th current contrast image and tissue image pair; establishing frame-to-frame registration ( 64 ) between (i) the current tissue image and (ii) the baseline tissue image; using the frame-to-frame registration ( 66 ) between the current tissue image frame and the baseline tissue image frame to transfer the ROI or VOI from (i) the baseline contrast image to (ii) the current contrast image, the current contrast and tissue image pair comprising an i th contrast image and an i th tissue image, establishing the frame-to-frame registration including determining a ROI or VOI motion transformation T i from the baseline image to the i th tissue image, the motion transformation T i being determined as a function of registering image information within the ROI or VOI of the baseline image to the i th tissue image, thereby creating a transformed ROI or VOI in the current contrast image; and performing quantitative analysis ( 68 ) on the transformed ROI or VOI of the current contrast image.