title: Accurate lumen diameter measurement in curved vessels in carotid ultrasound: an iterative scale-space and spatial transformation approach.
abstract: Monitoring of cerebrovascular diseases via carotid ultrasound has started to become a routine. The measurement of image-based lumen diameter (LD) or inter-adventitial diameter (IAD) is a promising approach for quantification of the degree of stenosis. The manual measurements of LD/IAD are not reliable, subjective and slow. The curvature associated with the vessels along with non-uniformity in the plaque growth poses further challenges. This study uses a novel and generalized approach for automated LD and IAD measurement based on a combination of spatial transformation and scale-space. In this iterative procedure, the scale-space is first used to get the lumen axis which is then used with spatial image transformation paradigm to get a transformed image. The scale-space is then reapplied to retrieve the lumen region and boundary in the transformed framework. Then, inverse transformation is applied to display the results in original image framework. Two hundred and two patients' left and right common carotid artery (404 carotid images) B-mode ultrasound images were retrospectively analyzed. The validation of our algorithm has done against the two manual expert tracings. The coefficient of correlation between the two manual tracings for LD was 0.98 (p < 0.0001) and 0.99 (p < 0.0001), respectively. The precision of merit between the manual expert tracings and the automated system was 97.7 and 98.7%, respectively. The experimental analysis demonstrated superior performance of the proposed method over conventional approaches. Several statistical tests demonstrated the stability and reliability of the automated system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Mangalore, India.|Point-of-Care Devices, Global Biomedical Technologies, Inc., Roseville, CA, USA.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Krishna Kumar
authors.affiliation: Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Toho University Ohashi Medical Center, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Tadashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Araki
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Mangalore, India.|Point-of-Care Devices, Global Biomedical Technologies, Inc., Roseville, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jeny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rajan
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Saba
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lavra
authors.affiliation: Cardiovascular Medicine, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Nobutaka
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.affiliation: Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Aditya M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: CorVasc Vascular Laboratory, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
authors.forename: Shoaib
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shafique
authors.affiliation: Vascular Diagnostic Center, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nicolaides
authors.affiliation: UC Davis Vascular Center, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Laird
authors.affiliation: Radiology Department, Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Ajay
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Point-of-Care Devices, Global Biomedical Technologies, Inc., Roseville, CA, USA. jasjit.suri@atheropoint.com.|Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, 95661, USA. jasjit.suri@atheropoint.com.|Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Idaho (Affl.), Pocatello, ID, USA. jasjit.suri@atheropoint.com.
authors.forename: Jasjit S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Suri
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D002339:Carotid Arteries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D002340:Carotid Artery Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D059168:Carotid Intima-Media Thickness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000379:methods*
keywords: B-mode ultrasound; Carotid artery; Curved vessels; Lumen diameter; Scale-space; Transformation