An imaging ultrasound system is provided with an ultrasound transducer and
an image processing unit for the acquisition of a three-dimensional
ultrasound image of the body of a patient, and a catheter for carrying out
a therapeutic or diagnostic intervention in the body of the patient. The
catheter accommodates, in addition to the customary instruments necessary
to carry out its task, three ultrasound receivers that are mounted at a
distance from one another on the tip of the catheter and are capable of
detecting the arrival of scan signals of the ultrasound transducer. The
distance between the ultrasound transducer and the receivers can be
calculated from the transit time of the scan signals. The receivers can
thus be localized in space. Localization enables notably the selection of,
for example, the plane from the three-dimensional ultrasound data that
contains all three receivers of the catheter. The tip of the catheter can
thus be automatically tracked and displayed on a monitor at all times
without manual displacement of the ultrasound transducer being necessary.