Novel Algorithms for Feature Detection and Hiding from Ultrasound Images

• US 20150342560A1
• Filed: 01/27/2014
• Published: 12/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2013
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Ultrasafe Ultrasound, LLC
• Original Assignee: Ultrasafe Ultrasound, LLC
• Inventors: Godil, Haris, Biswas, Abhishek, Davey, Neil, DAVEY, Sonya, Devalaraja, Samir, Shekhar, Raj
• Application Number:
  US14/652,459
• Publication Number:
  US 20150342560A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/085 for locating body or organic structures, e.g. tumours, calculi, blood vessels, nodules
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/0866 involving foetal diagnosis; pre-natal or peri-natal diagnosis of the baby
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/461 Displaying means of special interest
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5207 involving processing of raw data to produce diagnostic data, e.g. for generating an image reconstruction G06T11/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5215 involving processing of medical diagnostic data
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records

Abstract

An embodiment that relates to a method for detecting a fetus genitalia in an ultrasound image, having excluding regions from the ultrasound image, wherein the regions do not contain any feature of the fetus genitalia; identifying points of interest (POIs) from remaining regions of the ultrasound image; detecting the fetus genitalia from the POIs.

Claims

1. A method for detecting a fetus genitalia in an ultrasound image, comprising:

excluding regions from the ultrasound image, wherein the regions do not contain any feature of the fetus genitalia;

identifying points of interest (POIs) from remaining regions of the ultrasound image;

detecting the fetus genitalia from the POIs.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the regions excluded contain features of the fetus selected from a group consisting of skull, femur bone and nasal bone.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying POIs comprises selecting regions with a contrast above a threshold.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising excluding POIs with curvatures below a threshold.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising obscuring regions around the POIs from which the fetus genitalia is detected.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the fetus genitalia from the POIs comprises detecting features characteristic of labia, scrotum, penis, or a combination thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying POIs comprises selecting regions adjacent to pixels with the lowest 10% intensity among all pixels of the ultrasound image.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the fetus genitalia from the POIs comprises using a classification model.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising training a classification model using ultrasound images that contain at least one feature of fetus genitalia.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising training a classification model using ultrasound images that do not contain any feature of fetus genitalia.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the classification model is a support vector machine.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the classification model is a sliding window classifier.

13. A sonographic instrument comprising a physical processor and a physical memory having instructions recorded thereon, the instructions when executed by the physical processor implementing the method of any of claims 1-12.

14. The sonographic instrument of claim 13, further comprising a transducer configured to product an ultrasound wave, a sensor configured to receive echo of the ultrasound wave, and a display configured to display the ultrasound image.

15. A method for diagnosing anomaly in an ultrasound image, comprising:

obtaining the ultrasound image from a patient;

making a redacted image by obscuring at least one region of the ultrasound image;

making information of the redacted image available to the patient;

anonymizing the ultrasound image;

diagnosing the anomaly by analysing the anonymized ultrasound image;

making the diagnosis available to the patient;

wherein no information of the obscured region except the diagnosis is made available to the patient.

16. A method comprising detecting a feature in an ultrasound image prior to displaying the feature on a monitor in a vicinity of an ultrasound machine, and hiding the feature so as to prevent the feature from being displayed on the monitor, the method employing a sliding window algorithm.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising retaining the feature that is hidden from viewing on the monitor for remote viewing.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising exploiting similarity between frames of ultrasound images close in time to transfer findings from one frame to another frame.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising a graphics processing unit acceleration for real-time implementation.