Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology最新文献

{"title":"SDRD-Net: A Symmetric Dual-branch Residual Dense Network for OCT and US Image Fusion.","authors":"Zhang Xiao, Bin He, Zhiyi Chen, Rushu Peng, Qinghao Zeng","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ultrasound (US) images have the advantages of no radiation, high penetration, and real-time imaging, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) has the advantage of high resolution. The purpose of fusing endometrial images from optical coherence tomography (OCT) and ultrasound (US) is to combine the advantages of different modalities to ultimately obtain more complete information on endometrial thickness. To better integrate multimodal images, we first proposed a Symmetric Dual-branch Residual Dense (SDRD-Net) network for OCT and US endometrial image fusion. Firstly, using Multi-scale Residual Dense Blocks (MRDB) to extract shallow features of different modalities. Then, the Base Transformer Module (BTM) and Detail Extraction Module (DEM) are used to extract primary and advanced features. Finally, the primary and advanced features are decomposed and recombined through the Feature Fusion Module (FMM), and the fused image is output. We have conducted experiments across both private and public datasets, encompassing IVF and MIF tasks, achieving commendable results.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143434153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial Advisory Board","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/S0301-5629(25)00043-2","DOIUrl":"10.1016/S0301-5629(25)00043-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":"51 4","pages":"Page i"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143422734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Bi-modal Temporal Segmentation Network for Automated Segmentation of Focal Liver Lesions in Dynamic Contrast-enhanced Ultrasound.","authors":"Yu Duan, Siyuan Shi, Haiyi Long, Xian Zhong, Yang Tan, Guangjian Liu, Guanghua Wu, Si Qin, Xiaoyan Xie, Manxia Lin","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2024.12.014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2024.12.014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To develop and validate an automated deep learning-based model for focal liver lesion (FLL) segmentation in a dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) video.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>In this multi-center and retrospective study, patients with FLL who underwent dynamic CEUS exam were included from September 2021 to December 2021 (model development and internal test sets), and from March 2023 to May 2023 (external test sets). A bi-modal temporal segmentation network (BTS-Net) was developed and its performance was evaluated using Dice score, intersection over union (IoU) and Hausdorff distance, and compared against several segmentation methods. Time-intensity curves (TICs) were obtained automatically from BTS-Net and manually de-lineated by an experienced radiologist, and evaluated by intra-class correlation and Pearson correlation co-efficients. Multiple characteristics were analyzed to evaluate the influencing factors of BTS-Net.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 232 patients (160 men, median age 56 y) with single FLL were enrolled. BTS-Net achieved mean Dice scores of 0.78, 0.74 and 0.80, mean IoUs of 0.67, 0.62 and 0.68, and mean Hausdorff distances of 15.83, 16.01 and 15.04 in the internal test set and two external test sets, respectively. The mean intra-class correlation and Pearson correlation co-efficients of TIC were 0.89, 0.92 and 0.98, and 0.91, 0.93 and 0.99, respectively. BTS-Net demonstrated a significantly higher mean Dice score and IoU in large (0.82, 0.72), homogeneous positive enhanced (0.81, 0.70) or stable (0.81, 0.70) lesions in pooled test sets.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our study proposed BTS-Net for automated FLL segmentation of dynamic CEUS video, achieving favorable performance in the test sets. Downstream TIC generation based on BTS-Net performed well, demonstrating its potential as an effective segmentation tool in clinical practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143425985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reply to the Letter to the Editor From Professor Yu Du.","authors":"Meiying Yan, Chen Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143425971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Use of the Ultrasound Bone Maturity Indexes to Assess Whether Children Have Reached Their Final Height.","authors":"Yumiao Qiao, Pin Lv, Kai Hong, Ying Zhao, Qunqun Feng, Chao Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Ultrasound bone maturity indexes were used to assess whether children had reached their final height.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The follow-up study was performed between January 2022 and August 2024. Ultrasound bone maturity indexes, including the ossification ratio of the radius, ulna, and femur, and skeletal maturity score (SMS, the sum of the ossification ratio of the above three bones multiplied by 100), were collected from medical records, along with the children's age and height. The children were followed up to ascertain the annual increase in height during the 2 years before and after the ultrasound bone age assessment. Children were grouped according to whether they had reached their final height. The diagnostic performance (area under the curve, AUC) of ultrasound bone maturity indexes in assessing whether the children had reached their final height was confirmed.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 120 children (60 boys) with a mean age of 15.0 ± 1.7 years for boys and 14.1 ± 2.0 years for girls were included. At the attainment of final height, the mean values of radial, ulnar, and femoral ossification ratios, as well as the SMS, were 90%, 84%, 98%, and 271 in boys and 86%, 83%, 98%, and 267 in girls, respectively. Ultrasound bone maturity indexes were able to assess whether children had reached their final height, with the highest AUC for SMS of 0.99 (95% CI: 0.97, 1.01, cutoff value, 256) in boys and 0.95 (95% CI: 0.90, 1.00, cutoff value, 260) in girls.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>A child's height stops increasing before the ossification ratios of the bones reach 100%. Ultrasound bone maturity indexes, especially SMS, demonstrate high diagnostic performance in determining whether children have reached their final height.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143426188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integration of Anterior and Posterior Ultrasonography for Comprehensive Anterior Cruciate Ligament Visualization: A Novel Approach.","authors":"Yeong-Jang Chen, Ping-Chun Yeh, Chia-Hung Hung, Chueh-Hung Wu, Yu-Jen Chen, Ching-Chuan Jiang, Hsing-Kuo Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.02.002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Alternative medical imaging techniques are necessary to address the limitations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Therefore, this study aimed to develop an ultrasonographic method that integrates anterior and posterior approaches for measuring the entire length of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). We validated this method by identifying the middle ACL during arthroscopy and comparing the results to those of MRI. We hypothesized that the ACL length measurements obtained via ultrasonography and MRI would not differ significantly and that the posterior approach would provide a longer visual field of the ACL than the anterior approach.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Thirty-six patients (21 males, 15 females) diagnosed with meniscal injury or internal knee derangement were included. During arthroscopy, the surgeon identified the middle ACL using Ti-Cron™ sutures. Ultrasonographic approaches from the anterior and posterior perspectives were used to identify the distal and proximal ACL, respectively. The ACL length was measured using both ultrasonography and MRI, and the visual fields from both approaches were compared.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>One participant was excluded because of a torn ACL, and seven participants were excluded because of poor ultrasonographic image quality. The ACL length of the 28 included patients did not differ significantly between ultrasonography and MRI, with a moderate correlation between the two measurements. The visualized proportion of the ACL was greater through the posterior approach than through the anterior approach.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This ultrasonographic method visualizes the entire ACL length by combining anterior and posterior approaches, with the posterior offering a more extensive and clinically significant visual field.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143415990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"High-Frequency Ultrasound Characterization of Periodontal Soft Tissues Pre- and Post-Bacterial Inoculation.","authors":"Ankita Samal, Oliver D Kripfgans, I-Ching Wang, Amanda B Rodriguez Betancourt, Liana Webber, Carole Quesada, John Mazzocco, James D Wishart, Hsun-Liang Chan","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Current diagnostic methods of inflammatory periodontal diseases, e.g., visual evaluation, periodontal probing, and radiographs, are either subjective or insensitive. Intra-oral high-frequency ultrasound was investigated to quantify inflammation by detecting tissue dimensional and perfusion changes.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A cohort of 15-month-old mini-pigs, 4 female/male each, was analyzed. Pre-molars (PM) 3 and 4, as well as first molars (M1), were scanned. In bi-weekly time intervals all 4 quadrants were randomly enrolled and bacterial injection followed each quadrant scan in a weekly fashion. Soft tissue dimensions were obtained from B-mode images and statistically analyzed to identify correlations to inoculation time, i.e., response to bacterial loading, tooth type and sex, using analysis of variance and regression analysis. Color flow velocity and power-weighted color pixel density was obtained and statistically analyzed analogous to soft tissue.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Soft tissue thickness increased significantly post-inoculation at 1 and 2 mm below the free gingival margin for both genders and all observed teeth. The significance lasted for weeks 2, 4 and 6, except for female M1s (4 weeks). Color flow velocity was significantly higher compared with baseline for 6 weeks, except for male PM4 (2 weeks). Color flow power did not show significance for PM3 and 4, only in M1 (except male week 4). Significance also extended to tooth type and sex.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Periodontal tissue dimension and color flow velocity increased in correlation to bacterial inoculation. Further studies are needed to obtain an understanding of the underlying biology observed here. Eruption of dentition may have been a confounding factor for inflammation interpretation.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143415987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Clutter-Generating Phantom Material. Part II: Utilization in the Comparison of Conventional and Regularized Ultrasound Attenuation Estimation.","authors":"Hayley M Whitson, Ivan M Rosado-Mendez, Timothy J Hall","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.006","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A particular challenge in clinical ultrasound imaging is acoustic clutter, which arises from the heterogeneity of the speed of sound and reverberations between layered tissue types. Although clutter is common when imaging through complex tissue such as the abdominal wall, few studies have investigated its effects on quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameter estimation. The ultrasonic attenuation coefficient (AC) has shown promise as a biomarker for multiple applications. Recently, multiple regularized methods of AC estimation have been developed; however, their performance must be evaluated in clinically relevant scenarios such as in the presence of clutter. In a companion paper to this work, a material that produces clutter similar to that seen in clinical imaging was developed and characterized. Here, we utilize this clutter-generating phantom material to compare the bias and variance of AC estimates resulting from a conventional estimation method known as the spectral difference method (SDM) and a regularized method known as Analytical Global Regularized Backscatter Quantitative Ultrasound (ALGEBRA), which can either be implemented in 1D or 2D. A B-mode, target-based contrast-to-noise ratio was used to quantify the amount of clutter in data collected from a phantom with known AC. Estimation reliability was determined using the normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) and the percent bias. On average, 1D-ALGEBRA had a 22.86% smaller bias and a 32.19% smaller NRMSE than the SDM, while 2D-ALGEBRA had a 17.59% smaller bias and a 25.66% smaller NRMSE than the SDM. An analysis of variance model indicated that ALGEBRA is more robust to the presence of clutter than the SDM. Further statistical tests showed that the reduction in variance resulting from ALGEBRA was the main contributor to the reduction in NRMSE. This work demonstrates the utility of this clutter-generating phantom material in objective testing of QUS parameter estimation, as well as performance improvements obtained in phantoms with regularized methods from QUS parameter estimation in the presence of acoustic clutter.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143399873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Clutter-Generating Phantom Material. Part I: Development of a Tunable, Acoustic Clutter-Generating Layer for Use With Ultrasound Tissue-Mimicking Phantoms.","authors":"Katelyn Flint, Matthew Huber, James Long, Gregg Trahey, Timothy Hall","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2024.12.018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2024.12.018","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Acoustic clutter is a major source of image degradation for in vivo ultrasound imaging. However, clutter is often not represented in laboratory testing of ultrasound equipment. A phantom material is proposed that can be used to add calibrated amounts of clutter in the laboratory environment.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Previously, the speed of sound in agar has been adjusted by varying the concentration of propanol to which the agar is exposed. That property was leveraged in this work to create a phantom with an adjustable amount of clutter. Agar spheres were soaked in propanol solution, then strained and placed in mineral oil.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Image quality measurements showed an approximate range of achievable contrast degradation levels of 15 dB. Stability studies with the phantom material showed that it can be stored for at least 21 d after the speed of sound tuning in propanol, but once introduced to mineral oil the clutter will change over time.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>This work demonstrates a clutter-generating phantom material that can be used in conjunction with standard ultrasound imaging phantoms.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography and Shear Wave Dispersion: Correlation with Histopathological Changes in Autoimmune Hepatitis Patients.","authors":"Rawi Hazzan, Tor Regev-Sadeh, Tamar Dola, Hila Shemer-Shamay, Alona Umansky, Ehud Zigmond, Ziv Neeman","doi":"10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2025.01.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To evaluate the correlation between liver viscosity, as measured by shear wave dispersion (SWD), and fibrosis and inflammation in patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH). Additionally, to assess its potential as a non-invasive biomarker for hepatic fibrosis compared to shear wave elastography (SWE).</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This prospective study included 25 AIH patients who underwent pre-biopsy SWD and SWE measurements using the SuperSonic Mach30 system. Liver biopsy samples were assessed for fibrosis using the Scheuer grading system and for inflammation using the modified Hepatic Activity Index (mHAI). Correlations between viscosity, elastography, fibrosis, and inflammation were analysed using Spearman's correlation coefficients.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Viscosity demonstrated a significant correlation with fibrosis stages (Spearman's coefficient: 0.58, p = 0.002), while SWE showed a weaker correlation (Spearman's coefficient: 0.50, p = 0.01). Viscosity measurements also correlated moderately with the mHAI score (Spearman's coefficient: 0.62, p = 0.001). Subgroup analyses revealed weak to moderate correlations between viscosity and mHAI components across fibrosis stages.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our study suggests that viscosity may be better than SWE as a non-invasive marker for assessing hepatic fibrosis in AIH, particularly in the pre-treatment period when inflammation levels are elevated. However, we could not conclusively determine the relationship between viscosity and hepatic inflammation, as a small sample size limited our findings. Further research with a larger cohort of AIH patients is necessary to better understand the correlation between viscosity and inflammation in this rare condition.</p>","PeriodicalId":49399,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}