P3E-6 3D Tissue Characterization of the Equine Superficial Digital Flexor Tendons From In Vivo Ultrasound Images

A new technique for the 3D tissue characterization of healthy and injured equine superficial digital flexor tendons (SDFT) is presented. This method is based on in vivo 3D ultrasound (US) images and three steps are defined to identify the SDFT´s internal structure. First, a rigid body registration of the 2D US images that were acquired in free hand mode was performed. Second, each 2D US image was enhanced by a new method that first finds the echo envelope signal from the B-scan image, and then performs blind deconvolution algorithm to enhance the resolution of recovered images. Finally, the tendon structures were segmented based on a combination of 2D morphological methods. This technique was applied on in vivo US data sets of a healthy and of an injured SDFT scanned with a 7.5 MHz linear array transducer (SSD-2000-7.5, Aloka). A qualitative analysis of the enhanced images shows a coherent distribution of SDFT fiber bundles, their density on a cross-section that varies between 67-79 on the normal SDFT, and less for the injured one depending on the extent of the lesion. In conclusion, segmentation results demonstrate the utility of the proposed technique for the 3D characterization of the SDFT; this method can be useful to evaluate their structures after an injury and during the healing process