Patient-specific cases for an ultrasound training simulator.

We present a laptop-based ultrasound training simulator and a novel method for creation of patient-specific training datasets. The simulator consists of a laptop computer, a peripheral probe interface device with an embedded three-degree-of-freedom orientation sensor, a virtual US probe, a virtual patient model, a simulated US brightness scan (B-scan). Simulated B-scans are rendered from US volumes, which are synthesized using volume reconstruction methods from two-dimensional US imagery captured in a data acquisition stage from clinical patients. This methodology enables creation of patient-specific ultrasound simulation datasets for training purposes.