@article {Brudfors2015,
	title = {Towards real-time, tracker-less 3D ultrasound guidance for spine anaesthesia.},
	journal = {Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg},
	year = {2015},
	month = {04/2015},
	abstract = {<p>Epidural needle insertions and facet joint injections play an important role in spine anaesthesia. The main challenge of safe needle insertion is the deep location of the target, resulting in a narrow and small insertion channel close to sensitive anatomy. Recent approaches utilizing ultrasound (US) as a low-cost and widely available guiding modality are promising but have yet to become routinely used in clinical practice due to the difficulty in interpreting US images, their limited view of the internal anatomy of the spine, and/or inclusion of cost-intensive tracking hardware which impacts the clinical workflow.We propose a novel guidance system for spine anaesthesia. An efficient implementation allows us to continuously align and overlay a statistical model of the lumbar spine on the live 3D US stream without making use of additional tracking hardware. The system is evaluated in vivo on 12 volunteers.The in vivo study showed that the anatomical features of the epidural space and the facet joints could be continuously located, at a volume rate of 0.5\&nbsp;Hz, within an accuracy of 3 and 7\&nbsp;mm, respectively.A novel guidance system for spine anaesthesia has been presented which augments a live 3D US stream with detailed anatomical information of the spine. Results from an in vivo study indicate that the proposed system has potential for assisting the physician in quickly finding the target structure and planning a safe insertion trajectory in the spine.</p>
},
	doi = {10.1007/s11548-015-1206-1},
	url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11548-015-1206-1},
	author = {Brudfors, Mikael and Seitel, Alexander and Rasoulian, Abtin and Andras Lasso and Lessoway, Victoria A. and Osborn, Jill and Maki, Atsuto and Robert Rohling and Purang Abolmaesumi}
}
@conference {Karim-Aghaloo2008a,
	title = {Intensity-based registration of prostate brachytherapy implants and ultrasound},
	booktitle = {Procedings 5th IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro ISBI 2008},
	year = {2008},
	month = {14{\textendash}17 May},
	pages = {780{\textendash}783},
	doi = {10 1109/ISBI 2008 4541112},
	author = {Zahra Karim-Aghaloo and Gabor Fichtinger and David Gobbi and E. Clif Burdette and Robert Rohling and Purang Abolmaesumi}
}
@conference {Boisvert2008,
	title = {An open-source solution for interactive acquisition, processing and transfer of interventional ultrasound images},
	booktitle = {Workshop on Systems and Architectures for Computer Assisted Interventions, held in conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention},
	year = {2008},
	author = {Jonathan Boisvert and David Gobbi and Siddharth Vikal and Robert Rohling and Gabor Fichtinger and Purang Abolmaesumi}
}
@conference {Karim-Aghaloo2008,
	title = {Towards detecting surgical clips in 3D ultrasound for target localization in radiation therapy: a study on tissue phantoms},
	booktitle = {International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society},
	volume = {2008},
	year = {2008},
	pages = {5282{\textendash}5285},
	publisher = {Department of Electrical, Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON K7L3N6, Canada},
	organization = {Department of Electrical, Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON K7L3N6, Canada},
	abstract = {<p>A study is performed to measure the visibility of small surgical clips in 3D ultrasound volumes of a phantom as the first step towards using such clips as fiducial markers in radiation therapy Visibility is calculated as the contrast to noise ratio of the echo from the clip to the background The appearance of a resonance tail is also calculated using a moment analysis Contrast is found to be high, mostly independent of material, size of the clip All clips are visible, but the length of the tail is found to be dependent on clip orientation to the ultrasound beam The consistent visibility of the clips suggests they are suitable as fiducial markers in ultrasound, the dependency of the resonance tail on orientation provides an opportunity to distinguish clips from other specular reflectors</p>
},
	keywords = {Computer-Assisted, Equipment Design, Equipment Failure Analysis, Humans, Image Enhancement, Imaging, instrumentation, instrumentation/methods, methods, Phantoms, Radiotherapy, Reproducibility of Results, Sensitivity, Specificity, Surgical Instruments, Three-Dimensional, Ultrasonography},
	doi = {10 1109/IEMBS 2008 4650406},
	url = {http://dx doi org/10 1109/IEMBS 2008 4650406},
	author = {Zahra Karim-Aghaloo and Prasad Shrawane and Purang Abolmaesumi and Gabor Fichtinger and Robert Rohling}
}
