Early-stage atherosclerosis detection using deep learning over carotid ultrasound images

• Published in: Applied soft computing 2016-12, Vol.49, p.616-628
• Main Authors: Menchón-Lara, Rosa-María, Sancho-Gómez, José-Luis, Bueno-Crespo, Andrés
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Auto-encoders; Deep learning; Extreme learning machine; Image segmentation; Intima-media thickness
• ISSN: 1568-4946; 1872-9681
• DOI: 10.1016/j.asoc.2016.08.055

[Display omitted] •Intima-media thickness (IMT) is an early indicator of atherosclerosis.•Usually, IMT is manually evaluated on ultrasounds of the common carotid artery.•A fully automatic image segmentation method based on machine learning is proposed.•This technique avoids the uncertainty and variability of the manual procedure.•The suggested methodology shows an IMT measurement error of only 5.79±34.42μm. This paper proposes a computer-aided diagnosis tool for the early detection of atherosclerosis. This pathology is responsible for major cardiovascular diseases, which are the main cause of death worldwide. Among preventive measures, the intima-media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery stands out as early indicator of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular risk. In particular, IMT is evaluated by means of ultrasound scans. Usually, during the radiological examination, the specialist detects the optimal measurement area, identifies the layers of the arterial wall and manually marks pairs of points on the image to estimate the thickness of the artery. Therefore, this manual procedure entails subjectivity and variability in the IMT evaluation. Instead, this article suggests a fully automatic segmentation technique for ultrasound images of the common carotid artery. The proposed methodology is based on machine learning and artificial neural networks for the recognition of IMT intensity patterns in the images. For this purpose, a deep learning strategy has been developed to obtain abstract and efficient data representations by means of auto-encoders with multiple hidden layers. In particular, the considered deep architecture has been designed under the concept of extreme learning machine (ELM). The correct identification of the arterial layers is achieved in a totally user-independent and repeatable manner, which not only improves the IMT measurement in daily clinical practice but also facilitates the clinical research. A database consisting of 67 ultrasound images has been used in the validation of the suggested system, in which the resulting automatic contours for each image have been compared with the average of four manual segmentations performed by two different observers (ground-truth). Specifically, the IMT measured by the proposed algorithm is 0.625±0.167mm (mean±standard deviation), whereas the corresponding ground-truth value is 0.619±0.176mm. Thus, our method shows a difference between automatic and manual measures of only 5.79±34.42μm. Furthe