title: Segmentation of Uterus Using Laparoscopic Ultrasound by an Image-Based Active Contour Approach for Guiding Gynecological Diagnosis and Surgery.
abstract: In laparoscopic gynecologic surgery, ultrasound has been typically implemented to diagnose urological and gynecological conditions. We applied laparoscopic ultrasonography (using Esaote 7.5~10MHz laparoscopic transducer) on the retrospective analyses of 42 women subjects during laparoscopic extirpation and excision of gynecological tumors in our hospital from August 2011 to August 2013. The objective of our research is to develop robust segmentation technique for isolation and identification of the uterus from the ultrasound images, so as to assess, locate and guide in removing the lesions during laparoscopic operations. Our method enables segmentation of the uterus by the active contour algorithm. We evaluated 42 in-vivo laparoscopic images acquired from the 42 patients (age 39.1 ± 7.2 years old) and selected images pertaining to 4 cases of congenital uterine malformations and 2 cases of pelvic adhesions masses. These cases (n = 6) were used for our uterus segmentation experiments. Based on them, the active contour method was compared with the manual segmentation method by a medical expert using linear regression and the Bland-Altman analysis (used to measure the correlation and the agreement). Then, the Dice and Jaccard indices are computed for measuring the similarity of uterus segmented between computational and manual methods. Good correlation was achieved whereby 84%-92% results fall within the 95% confidence interval in the Student t-test) and we demonstrate that the proposed segmentation method of uterus using laparoscopic images is effective.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Xue-Hao
authors.initials: XH
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, Second Clinical College of Jinan University, People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Ying-Yuan
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Wei-Zong
authors.initials: WZ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Xian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Yong-Heng
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasound, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Qin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Zhi-Ying
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D005260:Female; D005833:Genital Neoplasms, Female / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014463:Ultrasonography; D014564:Urogenital Abnormalities / Q000175:diagnosis*; D014599:Uterus / Q000002:abnormalities* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology