Ultrasound Measurement of Vascular Distensibility Based on Edge Detection and Speckle Tracking Using Ultrasound DICOM Data

Abstract

This study presents an edge detection and speckle tracking (EDST) based algorithm to calculate distensibility as percentage of change of vessel diameter during cardiac cycles. Canny edge detector, Vandermonde matrix representation, Kanade Lucas Tomasi algorithm with pyramidal segmentation, and penalized least squares technique identifies the vessel lumen edge, track the vessel diameter, detrend the signal and find peaks and valleys when the vessel is fully distended or contracted. An upper extremity artery from 10 patients underwent an ultrasound examination as part of preoperative evaluation before arteriovenous fistula surgery. Three studies were performed to evaluate EDST with automatic peak and valley selection versus manual speckle selection of expert users using manual peak and valley selection. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, to obtain comparable results as those obtained by expert-users, and considerably reducing the variability associated with external factors such as excessive motion, fluctuations in stroke volume, beatto-beat blood pressure changes, breathing cycles, and armtransducer pressure.

Non-invasive estimation of vascular compliance and distensibility in the arm vessels: a novel ultrasound-based protocol

“…Third, the lumen of each vessel was processed through a manual segmentation procedure and the arterial CSAs were extracted from a single cardiac cycle only. Though a manual imaging processing was considered adequate for the purpose of the present proof of concept analysis, further efforts will be required to automatize image processing, e.g., exploiting speckle-tracking methods to automatically track and assess the vessel CSA over multiple cardiac cycles (37,46,47). This will allow to definitively extend the analysis to larger populations.…”

Semiautomated Software to Improve Stability and Reduce Operator‐Induced Variation in Vascular Ultrasound Speckle Tracking

“…18 This method starts with the user defined manual point selection and subsequently processes the vessel using filtering, segmentation, and automated edge detection prior to speckle tracking. 18 To briefly summarize, coding for this method was implemented using MATLAB (MathWorks, Natick, MA), and the threshold was adjusted manually to sharpen the lumen boundary in the CED-PD-MT method by the software operator. Then, the initial frame was extracted from the cine-loop DICOM data and binarized.…”

“…7,10,13 We have developed novel ultrasound software that allows investigation of vascular mechanics clinically. [14][15][16][17][18] This software uses standard ultrasound Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) data to measure circumferential vascular wall strain (distensibility) based on speckle tracking techniques. The software allows measurements of distensibility within single and multiple cardiac cycles and can be used to track changes in wall compliance as the AVF matures.…”

A Speckled Future

“…Clinical applications of ultrasound have evolved greatly since the first fuzzy pictures were created in the 1960s. 1 Ultrasound is now an indispensable tool in evaluation of patients with all kinds of kidney problems, in evaluation of vascular grafts and fistulas in dialysis patients, and in choosing proper blood vessels for creation of successful arteriovenous fistulas (mapping).…”

“…In this issue of ASAIO Journal, Funes-Lora et al describe a sophisticated program to analyze standard ultrasound images (in DICOM) to determine the exact location of the intimal border of a blood vessel, the maximum diameter of the inside of the vessel, and the increase in diameter as the vein expands with each heartbeat. 1 The method automatically determines speckle points, which are represent points in the image of the intima which arise from a mixture of interference patterns and natural acoustic reflections. 2,3 The program then calculates the change in distance between these points during successive heartbeats.…”