A modular software system to assist interpretation of medical images application to vascular ultrasound images

ANALYSIS, a modular software system that can assist interpretation of medical images, is presented in This work. ANALYSIS was designed to meet the needs of the general medical image analysis procedure and can be used for the pre-processing and analysis of medical images of various modalities and formats, in an attempt to assist diagnosis. The system includes two main modules for texture and motion analysis of selected regions of interest (ROIs). Motion can be estimated using region tracking and block matching. Texture features can be estimated using first order statistics, second order statistics, laws texture energy, and fractal dimension. Moreover, ANALYSIS includes modules for image preprocessing, statistical analysis, classification and clustering using fuzzy c-means. It provides a friendly user interface, control fields, tool buttons and menus. The system was used to assist diagnosis of carotid atherosclerosis from B-mode ultrasound images. Motion and texture characteristics where estimated for 10 symptomatic and 9 asymptomatic subjects. After dimensionality reduction of the extracted texture features, 23 features were considered most significant. The estimation of motion vectors on the luminal surface of the plaque can identify patterns of inherent plaque motion, which may be responsible for clinical symptoms. ANALYSIS can assist interpretation of medical images through lesion detection, characterization and assessment. Further studies for different medical diagnostic tasks using different imaging modalities proves the possibility of the system to be used in clinical practice.