Multi-resolution edge flow approach to vascular ultrasound for intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement

1. A computer-implemented method to correct shadow regions in a current scan of a patient; the method comprising:

receiving biomedical imaging data and patient demographic, data corresponding to the current scan of a patient;

checking the biomedical imaging data in real-time to determine if an artery of the patient has a calcium deposit in a proximal wall of the artery;

acquiring arterial data of the patient as a combination of longitudinal B-mode and transverse B-mode data;

using a data processor to automatically recognize the artery in a distal wall;

using the data processor to calibrate a region of interest around the automatically recognized artery using edge flow, the region of interest being automatically calibrated;

determining, automatically, the intima-media thickness (IMT) of an arterial wall of the automatically recognized artery; and

using the data processor to correct the IMT in the shadow regions in longitudinal B-mode ultrasound images by use of information from transverse B-mode ultrasound images.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the method is applied to calcium and non-calcium arterial IMT measurement.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the method is applied for automated recognition using a process including one or more from the group: a) a multi-resolution approach, b) a multi-resolution approach, where borders of the arterial wall are determined in coarse resolution, or c) a multi-resolution approach, where borders of the arterial wall are determined in coarse resolution and up-sampled back onto the original high resolution image.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1 including reducing speckle in real time in the region where the automated artery is recognized.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing a coarse resolution by convolution of higher order derivative of Gaussian kernels.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing a coarse resolution by convolution of higher order derivative of Gaussian kernels with and without calcium present in the arterial proximal wall.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the automated recognition is implemented using a feature based method.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the calibration of the region is guided by an edge flow method.

9. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the calibration of the region includes computing edge energy based on intensity and texture.

10. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing a lumen-intima (LI) calibration based on media-adventitia (MA) using a dependency approach using connectivity and labelling.

11. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing a media-adventitia (MA) and lumen-intima (LI) calibration from a border of the arterial wall calculation.

12. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing weak or missing media-adventitia (MA) edges from strong MA edges.

13. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing weak or missing lumen-intima (LI) edges from strong LI edges and full media-adventitia (MA) edges.

14. The method as claimed in claim 1 including monitoring the IMT for patients which are under clinical trials.

15. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing the IMT of a batch of patients in clinical databases automatically.

16. The method as claimed in claim 1 including computing the IMT using knowledge of ethnicity, demographics, age, and gender of patients.

17. The method as claimed in claim 1 including changing a calibration by a classifier, by a deformable model, by an edge detector, or by a combination of an edge detector with deformable model.