Various methods and systems are provided for shading a 2D ultrasound image, generated from ultrasound data, using a gradient determined from scalar values of the ultrasound image data. As one example, a method includes correlating image values of a dataset acquired with an ultrasound imaging system to height values； determining a gradient of the height values； applying shading to a 2D image generated from the dataset using the determined gradient； and displaying the shaded 2D image.
