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-iCEUS) and after (3D-iCEUS) tumor resection. Based on rigid registration techniques, a preselected vascular segment in cT1MR is searched in 3D-iCEUS and 3D-iCEUS 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.
Highlights
Intraoperative ultrasound imaging is nowadays commonly used in neurosurgery during brain tumor operations [1]
A simple vascular segment near to the tumor was selected in the preoperative contrast T1MR (cT1MR) data
If it occurred before resection, the identification in the 3D-iCEUSend data was not performed
Summary
Intraoperative ultrasound imaging is nowadays commonly used in neurosurgery during brain tumor operations [1]. At the beginning of the intervention, the ultrasound images show the surgeon the intraoperative state of the tumor (Figure 1b) [2]. The tumor size or position can be possibly slightly different at the operation time point from the preoperative state depicted in the preoperative MR data (Figure 1a). During the operation ultrasound imaging is a valuable tool to detect the residuals of tumor with the goal to optimize the tumor removal (Figure 1c,d) [3]. The interpretation of the ultrasound can be complex [4,5]. The sweep of the ultrasound probe is limited by the Sensors 2016, 16, 497; doi:10.3390/s16040497 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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