title: Fully automated carotid plaque segmentation in combined contrast-enhanced and B-mode ultrasound.
abstract: Carotid plaque segmentation in B-mode ultrasound (BMUS) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is crucial to the assessment of plaque morphology and composition, which are linked to plaque vulnerability. Segmentation in BMUS is challenging because of noise, artifacts and echo-lucent plaques. CEUS allows better delineation of the lumen but contains artifacts and lacks tissue information. We describe a method that exploits the combined information from simultaneously acquired BMUS and CEUS images. Our method consists of non-rigid motion estimation, vessel detection, lumen-intima segmentation and media-adventitia segmentation. The evaluation was performed in training (n = 20 carotids) and test (n = 28) data sets by comparison with manually obtained ground truth. The average root-mean-square errors in the training and test data sets were comparable for media-adventitia (411 ± 224 and 393 ± 239 μm) and for lumen-intima (362 ± 192 and 388 ± 200 μm), and were comparable to inter-observer variability. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method to perform fully automatic carotid plaque segmentation using combined BMUS and CEUS.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Zeynettin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Akkus
authors.affiliation: Departments of Medical Informatics & Radiology, Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Diego D B
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Carvalho
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stijn C H
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: van den Oord
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Arend F L
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Schinkel
authors.affiliation: Departments of Medical Informatics & Radiology, Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Imaging Physics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wiro J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Niessen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Imaging Physics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nico
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Imaging Physics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Antonius F W
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: van der Steen
authors.affiliation: Departments of Medical Informatics & Radiology, Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: j.bosch@erasmusmc.nl.
authors.forename: Johan G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Bosch
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002339:Carotid Arteries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D002340:Carotid Artery Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D059168:Carotid Intima-Media Thickness; D003287:Contrast Media; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015588:Observer Variation; D058226:Plaque, Atherosclerotic / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media
keywords: B-Mode; Carotid plaques; Contrast-enhanced ultrasound; Lumen–intima segmentation; Media–adventitia segmentation; Plaque segmentation; Vessel detection