An image analysis method for quantification of hepatic perfusion based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging

Yi-xin Li, Fang Yang, Ning Gu

Jiangsu Laboratory for Biomaterials and Devices.
School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University.
State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics.

DOI: 10.4236/jbise.2008.12019                

Abstract

Information about hepatic perfusion is used in clinical liver disease diagnosis. An image analy-sis system can help physicians make efficient and accurate diagnosis. The objective of this study is to propose an image analysis method for the quantification of the hepatic perfusion based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (CEUI). The proposed method contains frame selection, image registration, digital subtraction and grey-scale calculation. Then, by processing an image sequence, a time-intensity curve (TIC) for hepatic perfusion is derived. The kernel of this image analysis technology is digital subtrac-tion and its accuracy is improved by frame selec-tion and image registration. The advantage of this method is that it can obtain the perfusion information of the whole liver which is rarely ob-tained by traditional image analysis technology; therefore, it is a supplement of the traditional image analysis method. This method is applied on the quantification of a rabbit’s hepatic perfu-sion and the result shows the efficiency of it.

Keywords

Hepatic perfusion quantification, Image analysis, Image registration, Digital subtraction

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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