TITLE:
Automatic Measurement of Fetal Abdominal Biometric Parameters—Feasibility on a Portable Ultrasound Device
AUTHORS:
Naiad Hossain Khan, Eva Tegnander, Sigurd Storve, Johan Morten Dreier, Sturla Eik-Nes, Hans Torp, Gabriel Kiss
KEYWORDS:
Portable Ultrasound Scanner, Automatic Measurement, Mean Abdominal Diameter, Abdominal Circumference, Prenatal Ultrasound, ICT4D
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Vol.7 No.8,
August
24,
2017
ABSTRACT: An automatic method for
measuring the fetal mean abdominal diameter (MAD) or abdominal circumference (AC) with ultrasound is proposed. From
a correctly presented abdominal section suitable for MAD or AC measurement, the
location of fetal abdomen is detected by image processing. Thereafter, an active
contour model is converged along the abdominal boundary for measurement
purposes. The validation data set contained 310 images of fetuses with
gestational age (GA) from 14 to 41 weeks. The measurement success rate was 88.1%. By
manually indicating the location of the abdomen, the
success rate was further improved to 95.8% for the failed cases. The
correlation between manual and automatic measurements was 0.95 and the
intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.976 (95% confidence interval
(CI); 0.969 - 0.981). The average method execution time was 0.3 s. The mean error was
lower in young fetuses (0.4%) than in older
fetuses (-2.1%). The
proposed cross-platform method
was implemented on a portable, low-cost ultrasound machine prototype targeted for low- and middle-income countries
(LMIC); the results achieved were comparable to those of other state-of-the-art automatic methods.