Motion Estimation and Registration of B-Mode Ultrasound Images for Improved Visualisation

This thesis presents a method for motion tracking between ultrasound images that originated from moving an ultrasound probe. The motion tracking is done in two steps: In the first step, a modified block-matching search is used to track the motion between frames by tracking the speckle and the tissues in the images. From the modified block-matching approach, the global motion vector can be seen. In the second step, areas with motion vectors in the direction of the probes’ motion are put through another motion tracking algorithm called phase correlation. Doing so will improve the overall motion estimation. Phase correlation provides a smoother vector field compared to block-matching. At the end, an extended field-of-view frame will be obtained.