Computer-aided quantitative evaluation of texture features extracted from two-dimensional high frequency ultrasonograms after acute muscle contusion / 第二军医大学学报

ABSTRACT

Objective: To quantitatively evaluate the changes of texture features extracted from two-dimensional high frequency ultrasonograms of human muscle injured by acute contusion using the multiscale decomposition of echo intensity of interface reflections, and to preliminarily explore its clinical value. Methods: Two-dimensional ultrasound images of local muscles of 10 male patients with acute upper limb muscle contusion were obtained using high-frequency ultrasound. The region of interest (ROI) of normal muscle texture and the ROI of muscle texture with suspected injury on the same image of the patients were selected by Matlab 7.0 software in offline state. Eight texture parameters including mean of gray scale (Mean), standard variance of gray scale (SDev), number of blobs (NOB) of texture density, irregularity (IRGL) of texture primitive shape, mean size of blobs (SOB) of texture primitive, homogeneity of distribution (HOD) of texture uniformity, directionality of texture distribution (DOD) and periodicity of texture distribution (POD) of the two ROIs were extracted. The similarity difference values of the eight texture parameters between the two ROIs were automatically calculated by the multiscale decomposition of echo intensity of interface reflections. Two-dimensional ultrasound images of normal muscles in the same part of 10 healthy male volunteers were selected as controls, and two ROIs were randomly selected to calculate the similarity difference values of the above eight texture features between them. The similarity difference values of the eight texture features between patients with upper limb muscle contusion and healthy volunteers were compared. Results: Local hyperechoic lesions were found with disordered muscle fibers and fuzzy textures in the patients with acute upper extremity muscle contusion. There were significant differences in the similarity difference of fve textural parameters (IRGL, DOD, POD, Mean and SDev) between patients with acute upper limb muscle contusion and healthy controls (P<0.01). Conclusion: Computer-aided quantitative evaluation based on multiscale decomposition of echo intensity of interface reflections can lead to more accurate and detailed quantitative diagnosis of texture features extracted from two-dimensional high frequency ultrasonic images of muscle injured by acute contusion than human eyes, and it may have clinical values.