US Patent 7656418 User control of 3d volume plane crop

A method for interactive adjustment of a 3D ultrasound image of an object includes acquiring a loop of 3D image data of the object, and providing a 3D image of the object on a display for user viewing. The method also includes activating a crop mode via a user interface in response to a user input to generate a cropping plane. The cropping plane may be oriented by the user in relation to the orientation of the image of the object in image space. The cropping plane is displayed along with the 3D image. The user may manipulate the user interface to control the orientation of the cropping plane in the image space with respect to the orientation of the image.