3-D ultrasound calibration using a phantom with reduced complexity

The design rationale and motivation for a new phantom for 3D ultrasound calibration are presented. The phantom design is intended to present an alternative to complex 3D ultrasound calibration phantoms that require difficult or high precision fabrication. Registration precision of the calibration at a mean depth of 22.3 mm was found to be 1.26 mm. At the same mean depth, lengths of 10 mm and 20 mm were registered with mean absolute errors of 0.67 mm and 0.65 mm respectively. The volume of an egg phantom was scanned using a non-parallel image acquisition and was determined to within 1.7%. The calibration phantom is shown to require reduced complexity of fabrication yet produce comparable performance to existing calibration phantom designs.