Automatic Spinal Ultrasound Image Segmentation and Deployment for Real-time Spine Volumetric Reconstruction

Artificial intelligence for ultrasound scanning in regional anaesthesia: a scoping review of the evidence from multiple disciplines

“…Early approaches, most published before 2016–17, typically involved steps of feature extraction from the ultrasound image, followed by classification of these features, for both PNB 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 and CNB. 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 Around this point, there has been an increase in published data where the dominant technique was deep learning for both PNB 9 , 11 , 12 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 and CNB, 7 , 74 , 75 , …”

“…For some sources, it is not clear how the ground truth for training data was obtained. 9 , 11 , 12 , 28 , 29 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 45 , 47 , 50 , 55 , 57 , 59 , 60 , 68 , 70 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 78 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 93 …”

“… 7 , 80 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 Other functions included identifying the optimal needle insertion point, 29 , 35 , 81 , 88 , 89 , 91 structure identification (via segmentation or bounding boxes), 7 , 35 , 37 or 3D reconstruction of the spine. 74 …”

“…The ultrasound body regions used for CNB approaches were more consistent than for PNB. Nineteen sources used ultrasound scans of the lumbar spine 7 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 37 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 80 , 83 , 84 , 86 , 88 , 90 , 92 , 93 and two utilised the thoracolumbar spine, 74 , 82 whereas one did not specifically state which region was seen (though use of the lumbar region can be deduced as it is a case report of a patient undergoing total knee arthroplasty). 85 …”

“…An additional limitation to comparing evaluations of this technologies is that reporting varies considerably; only 32/93 (34.4%) reviewed sources reported demographic data for the subjects assessed in these studies. 7 , 9 , 12 , 21 , 22 , 29 , 30 , 35 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 46 , 52 , 53 , 74 , 75 , 78 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 88 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 This is important as demographic factors such as age (muscle atrophy) and obesity affect the appearance of anatomical structures on the ultrasound image. 94 These descriptions were themselves inconsistent; such as reporting age and gender, but not BMI, 78 or reporting only mean age/BMI without ranges.…”