Automatic Spine Ultrasound Segmentation for Scoliosis Visualization and Measurement.

Objective: Integrate tracked ultrasound and AI methods to provide a safer and more accessible alternative to X-ray for scoliosis measurement. We propose automatic ultrasound segmentation for 3-dimensional spine visualization and scoliosis measurement to address difficulties in using ultrasound for spine imaging.

Methods: We trained a convolutional neural network for spine segmentation on ultrasound scans using data from eight healthy adult volunteers. We tested the trained network on eight pediatric patients. We evaluated image segmentation and 3-dimensional volume reconstruction for scoliosis measurement.

Results: As expected, fuzzy segmentation metrics reduced when trained networks were translated from healthy volunteers to patients. Recall decreased from 0.72 to 0.64 (8.2% decrease), and precision from 0.31 to 0.27 (3.7% decrease). However, after finding optimal thresholds for prediction maps, binary segmentation metrics performed better on patient data. Recall decreased from 0.98 to 0.97 (1.6% decrease), and precision from 0.10 to 0.06 (4.5% decrease). Segmentation prediction maps were reconstructed to 3-dimensional volumes and scoliosis was measured in all patients. Measurement in these reconstructions took less than 1 minute and had a maximum error of 2.2° compared to X-ray.

Conclusion: automatic spine segmentation makes scoliosis measurement both efficient and accurate in tracked ultrasound scans.

Significance: Automatic segmentation may overcome the limitations of tracked ultrasound that so far prevented its use as an alternative of X-ray in scoliosis measurement.