Enhanced shadow detection for 3D ultrasound

Ultrasound imaging offers a fast, convenient and save instrument to conduct patient examinations for various medical scenarios. However, depending on the target region, occluding bone segments and other materials cause large and undesirable shadowing artifacts. Thus, the experience of the ultrasound operator is crucial for obtaining an ultrasound without artifacts for patient diagnosis. Even more so, when applying automated image processing algorithms. We therefore like to introduce our automatic 3D ultrasound shadow detection method that employs scan line energy and local image entropy information. Applying the method can help to prevent low quality image acquisitions with large shadowing artifacts by indicating shadow occurrences.