# UlRe-NeRF: 3D Ultrasound Imaging through Neural Rendering with Ultrasound Reflection Direction Parameterization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00860 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00860/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [On the Spectral Bias of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08734/) (2018)
- [GRAF: Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02442/) (2020)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [NeRP: Implicit Neural Representation Learning with Prior Embedding for Sparsely Sampled Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10991/) (2021)
- [MedNeRF: Medical Neural Radiance Fields for Reconstructing 3D-aware CT-Projections from a Single X-ray](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01020/) (2022)
- [An Arbitrary Scale Super-Resolution Approach for 3D MR Images via Implicit Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14476/) (2021)
- [IREM: High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance (MR) Image Reconstruction via Implicit Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15097/) (2021)
- [Ultra-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Ultrasound Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10520/) (2023)
- [ImplicitVol: Sensorless 3D Ultrasound Reconstruction with Deep Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12108/) (2021)
- [Deep Perceptual Image Quality Assessment for Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01114/) (2021)
- [Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs): A Review and Some Recent Developments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00375/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [UltraGS: Real-Time Physically-Decoupled Gaussian Splatting for Ultrasound Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07743/) (2025)
- [Multivariate Gaussian NeRF for Wide Field-of-View Ultrasound Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24187/) (2026)
- [Shadow Reduction in Ultrasound Imaging Using Differentiable Simulation and Radiance Field Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29373/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Three-dimensional ultrasound imaging is a critical technology widely used in medical diagnostics. However, traditional 3D ultrasound imaging methods have limitations such as fixed resolution, low storage efficiency, and insufficient contextual connectivity, leading to poor performance in handling complex artifacts and reflection characteristics. Recently, techniques based on NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields) have made significant progress in view synthesis and 3D reconstruction, but there remains a research gap in high-quality ultrasound imaging. To address these issues, we propose a new model, UlRe-NeRF, which combines implicit neural networks and explicit ultrasound volume rendering into an ultrasound neural rendering architecture. This model incorporates reflection direction parameterization and harmonic encoding, using a directional MLP module to generate view-dependent high-frequency reflection intensity estimates, and a spatial MLP module to produce the medium's physical property parameters. These parameters are used in the volume rendering process to accurately reproduce the propagation and reflection behavior of ultrasound waves in the medium. Experimental results demonstrate that the UlRe-NeRF model significantly enhances the realism and accuracy of high-fidelity ultrasound image reconstruction, especially in handling complex medium structures.