Quantification of kidneys from 3D ultrasound in pediatric hydronephrosis

This paper introduces a complete framework for the quantification of renal structures (parenchyma, and collecting system) in 3D ultrasound (US) images. First, the segmentation of the kidney is performed using Gabor-based appearance models (GAM), a variant of the popular active shape models, properly tailored to the imaging physics of US image data. The framework also includes a new graph-cut based method for the segmentation of the collecting system, including brightness and contrast normalization, and positional prior information. The significant advantage (p = 0.03) of the new method over previous approaches in terms of segmentation accuracy has been successfully verified on clinical 3DUS data from pediatric cases with hydronephrosis. The promising results obtained in the estimation of the volumetric hydronephrosis index demonstrate the potential of our new framework to quantify anatomy in US and asses the severity of hydronephrosis.