Paper
14 February 2012 Lesion segmentation and bias correction in breast ultrasound B-mode images including elastography information
Gerard Pons, Joan Martí, Robert Martí, Mariano Cabezas, Andrew di Battista, J. Alison Noble
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Breast ultrasound (BUS) imaging is an imaging modality used for the detection and diagnosis of breast lesions and it has become a crucial modality nowadays specially for providing a complementary view when other modalities (i.e. mammography) are not conclusive. However, lesion detection in ultrasound images is still a challenging problem due to the presence of artifacts such as low contrast, speckle, inhomogeneities and shadowing. In order to deal with these problems and improve diagnosis accuracy, radiologists tend to complement ultrasound imaging with elastography data. Following the prominent relevance of elastography in clinical environments, it is reasonable to assume that lesion segmentation methods could also benefit from this complementary information. This paper proposes a novel breast ultrasound lesion segmentation framework for B-mode images including elastography information. A distortion field is estimated to restore the ideal image while simultaneously identifying regions of similar intensity inhomogeneity using a Markov Random Field (MRF) and a maximum a posteriori (MAP) formulation. Bivariate Gaussian distributions are used to model both B-mode and elastography information. This paper compares the fused B-mode and elastography framework with B-mode or elastography alone using different cases, including illustrative cases, where B-mode shows a well defined lesion and where elastography provides more meaningful information, showing a significant improvement when B-mode images are not conclusive which is often the case in non cystic lesions. Results show that combining both B-mode and elastography information in an unique framework makes the algorithm more robust and image quality independent.
© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Gerard Pons, Joan Martí, Robert Martí, Mariano Cabezas, Andrew di Battista, and J. Alison Noble "Lesion segmentation and bias correction in breast ultrasound B-mode images including elastography information", Proc. SPIE 8314, Medical Imaging 2012: Image Processing, 83141E (14 February 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.910591
Lens.org Logo
CITATIONS
Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Elastography

Image segmentation

Ultrasonography

Breast

Expectation maximization algorithms

Tissues

Tumors

RELATED CONTENT


Back to Top