Abstract:
Automatic fetus head’s boundary detection in the
ultrasound image is a very challenging task due to the formation
of intensity profile of the image. Ultrasound images are mostly
affected by speckle noise and does not show a smooth intensity
variation. A computer-based assistance system for the
calculation of gestational age of the fetus is useful for the
practitioners. Gestational age is a key quantity for an analysis
about the baby’s healthy growth which is calculated from the
fetus head circumference. In this study, a deep learning-based
solution is proposed where the layers and the parameters are
adjusted in the U-Net architecture to maximize accuracy of the
localization of the head region. There after the extracted contour
is used to fit an ellipse and measure the age. The algorithm is
trained with 899 images and validated with 100 images. Testing
results on 335 images reveals promising with almost 100%
localization accuracy and 88.96% specification. Detection of
small size fetus is affected by the very closest similar intensity
pattern. It will be addressed in the future
