Detecting microcephaly and macrocephaly from ultrasound images using artificial intelligence.

Abstract

Background: Microcephaly and macrocephaly, which are abnormal congenital markers, are associated with developmental and neurologic deficits. Hence, there is a medically imperative need to conduct ultrasound imaging early on. However, resource-limited countries such as Ethiopia are confronted with inadequacies such that access to trained personnel and diagnostic machines inhibits the exact and continuous diagnosis from being met.

Objective: This study aims to develop a fetal head abnormality detection model from ultrasound images via deep learning.

Methods: Data were collected from three Ethiopian healthcare facilities to increase model generalizability. The recruitment period for this study started on November 9, 2024, and ended on November 30, 2024. Several preprocessing techniques have been performed, such as augmentation, noise reduction, and normalization. SegNet, UNet, FCN, MobileNetV2, and EfficientNet-B0 were applied to segment and measure fetal head structures using ultrasound images. The measurements were classified as microcephaly, macrocephaly, or normal using WHO guidelines for gestational age, and then the model performance was compared with that of existing industry experts. The metrics used for evaluation included accuracy, precision, recall, the F1 score, and the Dice coefficient.

Results: This study was able to demonstrate the feasibility of using SegNet for automatic segmentation, measurement of abnormalities of the fetal head, and classification of macrocephaly and microcephaly, with an accuracy of 98% and a Dice coefficient of 0.97. Compared with industry experts, the model achieved accuracies of 92.5% and 91.2% for the BPD and HC measurements, respectively.

Conclusion: Deep learning models can enhance prenatal diagnosis workflows, especially in resource-constrained settings. Future work needs to be done on optimizing model performance, trying complex models, and expanding datasets to improve generalizability. If these technologies are adopted, they can be used in prenatal care delivery.

Clinical trial number: Not applicable.