A 3D ultrasound renal calculi fragmentation image analysis system for extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is the most effective and common practice for the treatment of renal calculi. After the treatment X-ray or ultrasound images are used to visually estimate the fragmentation of the stone. Unfortunately, up to now, there is not any method for quantitative estimation of the fragmentation level from ultrasound images. Conventional ultrasound image systems acquire two dimensional images. In this study we propose that such two dimensional images can assemble three dimensional images acquired along the duration of the treatment and apply Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) texture measurements to produce a fragmentation level measurement figure. Measurements with phantoms and simulated stone models were used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results showed that there are significant variations between different texture features but different fragmentation levels can be correlated to different values of the texture features.