Automated Deep Learning-based Single-Step Diameter Estimation of Carotid Arteries in B-mode Ultrasound

Accurate measurement of blood vessel diameter on ultrasonic images is important in many vascular exams. In one of them, volumetric blood flow measurements, the volume flow rate is calculated by multiplying the time-averaged velocity with the cross-sectional area of the vessel (using diameter measured from B-mode images). Computation of lumen diameter is also vital for planning surgical procedures like carotid artery stenting and endarterectomy. More recently, several automated vessel diameter estimation methods employing deep learning have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a novel single-step automated deep learning-based vessel diameter estimation technique developed on B-mode images. Longitudinal images of the human common carotid artery were acquired by trained vascular sonographers in human subjects using a linear array probe. Ground truth measurements were obtained by a human expert to validate the proposed technique. 504 images (with augmentation) were divided into training, validation, and test sets. Three pre-trained deep learning networks were used for training, and the lumen diameter was predicted in a hold-out test set. The Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) ranged from 0.22-0.65 mm and 0.32-0.82 mm, respectively, for the three networks. Furthermore, 5-fold cross-validation resulted in MAD and RMSE of 0.36±0.1 mm and 0.513±0.15 mm, respectively. Clinical Relevance- The results demonstrate that the technology can potentially be embedded in commercial scanners to make the workflow in vascular ultrasound more efficient.