Real-time Ultrasound (US) image fusion with a pre-acquired second imaging dataset - Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and/or CT/PET - has become widely used in recent years for both diagnosis and image-guided interventional procedures. Liver and kidneys are the main focused anatomical districts, related to abdominal application. There are still nowadays some drawbacks, regarding the adoption of the fusion imaging technique in everyday practice especially regarding its ease of use and the time needed in order to obtain a precise real-time fusion between US and the second imaging modality. The present work is a preliminary study on the feasibility and practical use of an Automatic registration algorithm for CT-US real-time fusion imaging. Data obtained by tests performed on a Doppler phantom, for the assessment of the precision of the registration procedure and in-vivo Automatic registration tests, are presented.

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Real-time fusion imaging technologies are increasingly being used among interventional radiologists, mostly Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) dataset, fused with Ultrasound (US) imaging. In addition, fusion of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and CT is increasingly diffused in clinical practice, due to the wide availability of PET scanners and the capability to make either a direct (acquisitions performed within the same system) or an indirect (procedure performed on an external workstation, merging the two different sets of acquired data) fusion with CT data. The present work describes the feasibility of real-time fusion imaging directly between PET data and US imaging, with CT scans being used only for PET-US fusion registration. Data on multimodality registration precision and clinical applications are presented as well.

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The present work describes the ergonomics and usability preliminary tests regarding the human upper limb kinematics and cognitive evaluation of two diagnostic portable ultrasound scanners. The tests were performed by two sonographers (an expert one and a novice one) on one subject in abdominal and vascular clinical applications. The two portable systems had different user interfaces: one system had a classic Software keys interactive Menu, placed in the lower part of the screen, with toggles and buttons for the activation and adjustment of the functions, then physical qwerty keyboard and control panel. The other system had a touch screen integrated in the control panel with an interactive user interface and reduced number of physical buttons. Comparisons between the two systems considering the two sonographer's use are provided. Motion control and eye tracking scan path results will be presented and discussed for both users on both systems