Method for Extracting Vascular Perfusion Region Based on Ultrasound Contrast Agent

Abstract Vascular perfusion distribution in fibroids contrast-enhanced ultrasound images provides useful pathological and physiological information, because the extraction of the vascular perfusion area can be helpful to quantitative evaluation of uterine fibroids blood supply. The pixel gray scale in vascular perfusion area of fibroids contrast-enhanced ultrasound image sequences is different from that in other regions, and, based on this, we proposed a method of extracting vascular perfusion area of fibroids. Firstly, we denoised the image sequence, and then we used Brox optical flow method to estimate motion of two adjacent frames, based on the results of the displacement field for motion correction. Finally, we extracted vascular perfusion region from the surrounding background based on the differences in gray scale for the magnitude of the rich blood supply area and lack of blood supply area in ultrasound images sequence. The experimental results showed that the algorithm could accurately extract the vascular perfusion area, reach the precision of identification of clinical perfusion area, and only small amount of calculation was needed and the process was fairly simple.