Vascular Structure Identification in Intraoperative 3D Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Data

Abstract

In this paper, a method of vascular structure identification in intraoperative 3D Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) data is presented. Ultrasound imaging is commonly used in brain tumor surgery to investigate in real time the current status of cerebral structures. The use of an ultrasound contrast agent enables to highlight tumor tissue, but also surrounding blood vessels. However, these structures can be used as landmarks to estimate and correct the brain shift. This work proposes an alternative method for extracting small vascular segments close to the tumor as landmark. The patient image dataset involved in brain tumor operations includes preoperative contrast T1MR (cT1MR) data and 3D intraoperative contrast enhanced ultrasound data acquired before (3D-iCEUSstart) and after (3D-iCEUSend) tumor resection. Based on rigid registration techniques, a preselected vascular segment in cT1MR is searched in 3D-iCEUSstart and 3D-iCEUSend data. The method was validated by using three similarity measures (Normalized Gradient Field, Normalized Mutual Information and Normalized Cross Correlation). Tests were performed on data obtained from ten patients overcoming a brain tumor operation and it succeeded in nine cases. Despite the small size of the vascular structures, the artifacts in the ultrasound images and the brain tissue deformations, blood vessels were successfully identified.

The role of contrast-enhanced ultrasound in neurosurgical disease

“…CEUS may be useful in intraoperatively mapping those landmarks and increasing the rate of complete lesion resection. 16 Table 1 outlines the findings reported by the series analyzed in this review.…”

“…25 More research is also necessary to perfect the use of CEUS to evaluate changes in tumor vascular architecture after resection. 16 The resection cavity disrupts the preoperative vessel layout and obliterates predetermined surgical landmarks. CEUS may be useful in intraoperatively mapping those landmarks and increasing the rate of complete lesion resection.…”

Fusion of Intraoperative 3D B-mode and Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Data for Automatic Identification of Residual Brain Tumors

“…A 3D ultrasound volume was then reconstructed from the 2D slices by the neuronavigation system. The 3D iCEUS data were obtained by injecting 4.8 mL of an intravenous ultrasound contrast agent (SonoVue, Bracco s.p.a, Milan, Italy) at a rate of 3.0 mL/min using a syringe pump (ACIST VueJect, Bracco s.p.a, Milano, Italy) and the contrast harmonic imaging (CHI) modality [10]. The contrast agent injection was performed via the central venous catheter positioned in the vena jugularis interna.…”

“…The use of an ultrasound contrast agent to enhance brain tumor tissue and residual tumor is currently being developed. The technique is not new; contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging is routinely performed, and it was already tested in other medical areas like breast tumor diagnosis [3,4], liver lesions [5,6], renal masses [7][8][9] or blood vessel identification [10][11][12]. Additionally, improvements of brain tumor tissues and tumor residuals enhancement by using CEUS were effectively demonstrated by several recent studies [13][14][15][16][17].…”

Toward Optimal Computation of Ultrasound Image Reconstruction Using CPU and GPU

“…Ultrasound imaging using arrays of transducer elements has been widely applied in medicine [1,2] and industry [3,4]. One of its challenges is to deal with real-time applications.…”