Scoliotic Imaging With a Novel Double-Sweep 2.5-Dimensional Extended Field-of-View Ultrasound

IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2019 Aug;66(8):1304-1315. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2019.2920422. Epub 2019 Jun 3.

Abstract

Extended field-of-view ultrasound (US EFOV) imaging is a technique used extensively in the clinical field to attain interpretable panorama of anatomy; 2.5-D US EFOV has recently been proposed for spine imaging. In the original 2.5-D US EFOV, it makes use of a six degrees-of-freedom positional sensor attached to the US probe to record the corresponding position of each B-scan. By combining the positional information and the B-scan images, the 2.5-D EFOV can reconstruct a panorama on a curved image plane when the scanning trajectory of the US probe is curved. In this paper, an improved method based on the Bezier interpolation is proposed to better reconstruct 2.5-D US EFOV imaging, producing the panoramas with smoother texture and higher quality. To make it more applicable for scoliosis patients, we designed a novel method called double-sweep 2.5-D EFOV to better image the spinal tissues and easily compute the Cobb angle. In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrated that the 2.5-D EFOV images obtained by the proposed method can present anatomical structures of the scanning region accurately.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Humans
  • Image Enhancement / methods
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Scoliosis / diagnostic imaging*
  • Ultrasonography / instrumentation
  • Ultrasonography / methods*