4D ultrasound - extract 3D data to use in other applications?

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Hi Slicer community,

I’ve been sent a cardiac dataset which appears to be a number of volumes extracted directly from an ultrasound machine (I am attaching a video of all the volumes available).

I have never worked with such a dataset before & am interested in anyone has any tips on topics / areas I should familiarise myself with to understand more.

Ultimately I’d like to extract the volumes into a format that we could query in 3D in Unity for instance, a bit like we have done for this CT data → Canine echocardiography simulator mobile phone - 3D Veterinary Learning, IVALA.

It would be cool for a learner to be able to ‘slice’ through the ultrasound 3D volume in realtime and have the 2D view reflect what they are seeing.

A good start would rpobably be if there were a way to convert a volume into a set of images?

At the moment these volumes are single files with no recognisable extension.

Any tips welcomed!

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As far as I can tell those are all just recordings of 2D sequences, not true 4D ultrasound data. You would need to record a sweep, ideally with a tracked probe, or use a natively 3D probe.

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Thank you @pieper .

Is a ‘natively probe’ a specific thing or did you just mean to type ‘native’ ?

I will ask them also about their machine & capabilities.

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By " a natively 3D probe" I mean a probe that acquires a volume rather than a slice.

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Pixel data in these series seem to contain only screen capture videos. This is very common in ultrasound imaging. In addition to this, the series may also contain 3D/4D volume in private tags. SlicerHeart extension can extract these volumes from some kind of data sets. See more information here.

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