31 Computer Vision News Computer Vision News TUS-REC Challenge series That’s exactly the challenge with freehand ultrasound. In many hospitals, especially those with limited resources, clinicians use simple handheld ultrasound probes, affordable, portable and easy to carry anywhere in the clinic or even to remote communities. These probes capture 2D slices of the body as the clinician moves their hand, but without a tracking device to record the probe’s position and orientation, turning those slices into a 3D image is extremely difficult. It’s like trying to build a 3D puzzle without knowing where each piece came from. Trackerless freehand ultrasound reconstruction aims to solve this problem. It takes ordinary, inexpensive ultrasound scans and uses clever algorithms to estimate how the probe moved, making it possible to reconstruct a full 3D picture of organs or tissues. This could make 3D ultrasound far more accessible around the world, reducing the need for expensive equipment and giving clinicians richer information for diagnosis. However, despite decades of research, progress has been slow. One major reason is that researchers haven’t had shared datasets or standard benchmarks to compare methods fairly. Each group uses different data, making it hard to tell whether new techniques are genuinely better. TUS-REC changes this. It is the first open, standardised benchmark specifically for trackerless ultrasound reconstruction. It provides a common platform where researchers can test and compare their algorithms on the same data, helping the field move forward more quickly and reliably. In short, trackerless freehand ultrasound could bring advanced imaging to places that need it most, and TUS-REC helps the community finally build and compare the tools needed to make that vision real, one that shared by Qi and her team. Setup for freehand ultrasound data acquisition.
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