Illustrated ultrasound for multimodal data interpretation of liver examinations

Traditional visualization of real-time 2D ultrasound data is difficult to interpret, even for experienced medical personnel. To make the interpretation during the education phase easier, we enhance the visualization during liver examinations with an abstracted depiction of relevant anatomical structures, here denoted as illustrated ultrasound. The specifics of enhancing structures are available through an interactively co-registered computed tomography, which has been enhanced by semantic information. To assist the orientation in the liver, we partition the liver into Couinaud segments. They are defined in a rapid segmentation process based on linked 2D slice views and 3D exploded views. The semantics are interactively related from the co-registered modality to the real-time ultrasound via co-registration. During the illustrated ultrasound examination training we provide visual enhancements that depict which liver segments are intersected by the ultrasound slice.