METHOD OF RE-SAMPLING ULTRASOUND DATA

The present invention relates to multi-dimensional filtering of ultrasound scan data for antialiasing or reconstruction for the purpose of re-sampling. In particular, the present invention provides a method of re-sampling ultrasound scan data, comprising the steps of: a) obtaining sampled ultrasound scan data acquired from a beamforming system, the sampled data being defined by an original n-dimensional sample coordinate system having n axes, that is defined by the ultrasound probe and scan geometry and in which the samples are spaced uniformly along each axis when measured in units appropriate to that axis; b) defining desired target sample positions in a target n-dimensional co-ordinate system, that are uniformly spaced along each axis when measured in units appropriate to that axis; c) mapping the target sample positions defined in step (b) into said original n-dimensional sample co-ordinate system of step (a); d) quantizing the positions of the mapped target samples of step (c) so that they fall on simple exact integer subspacings between the original sample positions; e) designing a set of n-dimensional linear filter kernels according to application of Nyquist- Shannon Sampling Theory, one for each different target sample position relative to the original sample positions of its nearest neighbors, and using the original sample coordinates of the sampled data of step (a) and the desired target sample positions of step (d) in their respective n-dimensional spaces, said n-dimensional filter being separable along each of the original scan dimensions; and f) applying to the sampled data of step (a) the set of n-dimensional linear filter kernels designed in step (e), each filter being applied to calculate the target sample thereby obtaining re-sampled data.