Ultrasound semi-automated measurement of fetal nuchal translucency thickness based on principal direction estimation

Heechul Yoon; Hyuntaek Lee; Haekyung Jung; Mi-Young Lee; Hye-Sung Won

doi:10.1117/12.2075288

17 March 2015 Ultrasound semi-automated measurement of fetal nuchal translucency thickness based on principal direction estimation

Heechul Yoon, Hyuntaek Lee, Haekyung Jung, Mi-Young Lee, Hye-Sung Won

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9419, Medical Imaging 2015: Ultrasonic Imaging and Tomography; 941914 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2075288
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2015, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to introduce a novel method for nuchal translucency (NT) boundary detection and thickness measurement, which is one of the most significant markers in the early screening of chromosomal defects, namely Down syndrome. To improve the reliability and reproducibility of NT measurements, several automated methods have been introduced. However, the performance of their methods degrades when NT borders are tilted due to varying fetal movements. Therefore, we propose a principal direction estimation based NT measurement method to provide reliable and consistent performance regardless of both fetal positions and NT directions. At first, Radon Transform and cost function are used to estimate the principal direction of NT borders. Then, on the estimated angle bin, i.e., the main direction of NT, gradient based features are employed to find initial NT lines which are beginning points of the active contour fitting method to find real NT borders. Finally, the maximum thickness is measured from distances between the upper and lower border of NT by searching along to the orthogonal lines of main NT direction. To evaluate the performance, 89 of in vivo fetal images were collected and the ground-truth database was measured by clinical experts. Quantitative results using intraclass correlation coefficients and difference analysis verify that the proposed method can improve the reliability and reproducibility in the measurement of maximum NT thickness.

Citation Download Citation

Heechul Yoon, Hyuntaek Lee, Haekyung Jung, Mi-Young Lee, and Hye-Sung Won "Ultrasound semi-automated measurement of fetal nuchal translucency thickness based on principal direction estimation", Proc. SPIE 9419, Medical Imaging 2015: Ultrasonic Imaging and Tomography, 941914 (17 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2075288

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KEYWORDS

Fetus

Reliability

Translucency

Ultrasonography

Radon transform

Distance measurement

In vivo imaging

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