Abstract (EN)

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is a valuable imaging modality in the detection and evaluation of different kinds of lesions. Three-dimensional CEUS acquisitions allow quantitative volumetric assessments and better visualization of lesions, but automatic and robust analysis of such images is very challenging because of their poor quality. In this paper, we propose a method to automatically segment lesions such as cysts in 3D CEUS data. First we use a pre-processing step, based on the guided filtering framework, to improve the visibility of the lesions. The lesion detection is then performed through a multi-scale radial symmetry transform. We compute the likelihood of a pixel to be the center of a dark rounded shape. The local maxima of this likelihood are considered as lesions centers. Finally, we recover the whole lesions volume with multiple front propagation based on image intensity, using a fast marching method. For each lesion, the final segmentation is chosen as the one which maximizes the gradient flux through its boundary. Our method has been tested on several clinical 3D CEUS images of the kidney and provides promising results. Copyright 2012 Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. The original version of this work can be found by using the doi:10.1117/12.911103