APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR VISUALIZING ULTRASONIC IMAGES

The present invention provides a system and method for visualizing internal images of an anatomical body. Internal images of the body are acquired by an ultrasound imaging transducer. The position and orientation of the ultrasound imaging transducer is tracked in a frame of reference by a spatial determinator. The position of the images in the frame of reference is determined by calibrating the ultrasound imaging transducer to produce a vector position of the images with respect to a fixed point on the transducer. This vector position can than be added to the position and orientation of the fixed point of the transducer in the frame of reference determined by the spatial determinator. The position and orientation of a medical instrument used on the patient are also tracked in the frame of reference by spatial determinators. The position and orientation of the instrument is mapped onto the position and orientation of the images. This information is used to generate processed images from the images acquired by the transducer. The processed images are generated from a view spatially related to the position of the instrument. The system is expandable so that more than one instrument and more than one transducer can be used.