Morphological active contour without edge-based model for real-time and non-rigid uterine fibroid tracking in HIFU treatment

[摘要] High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapy represents an image-guided and non-invasive surgical approach to treat uterine fibroid. During the HIFU operation, it is challenging to obtain the real-time and accurate lesion contour automatically in ultrasound (US) video. The current intraoperative image processing is completed manually or semi-automatic. In this Letter, the authors propose a morphological active contour without an edge-based model to obtain accurate real-time and non-rigid US lesion contour. Firstly, a targeted image pre-processing procedure is applied to reduce the influence of inadequate image quality. Then, an improved morphological contour detection method with a customised morphological kernel is harnessed to solve the low signal-to-noise ratio of HIFU US images and obtain an accurate non-rigid lesion contour. A more reasonable lesion tracking procedure is proposed to improve tracking accuracy especially in the case of large displacement and incomplete lesion area. The entire framework is accelerated by the GPU to achieve a high frame rate. Finally, a non-rigid, real-time and accurate lesion contouring for intraoperative US video is provided to the doctor. The proposed procedure could reach a speed of more than 30 frames per second in general computer and a Dice similarity coefficient of 90.67% and Intersection over Union of 90.14%.

[学科分类] 肠胃与肝脏病学

[关键词] biomedical ultrasonics;medical image processing;surgery;ultrasonic therapy;image segmentation;ultrasonic imaging;morphological active contour;edge-based model;nonrigid uterine;HIFU treatment;ultrasound therapy;noninvasive surgical approach;uterine fibroid;HIFU operation;accurate lesion contour;current intraoperative image processing;accurate real-time;nonrigid US lesion contour;targeted image pre-processing procedure;inadequate image quality;improved morphological contour detection method;customised morphological kernel;low signal-to-noise ratio;HIFU US images;nonrigid lesion contour;reasonable lesion tracking procedure;tracking accuracy;incomplete lesion area;intraoperative US video