Supervised classification approach of biometric measures for automatic fetal defect screening in head ultrasound images

Abstract

This paper presents an advanced approach for foetal brain abnormalities diagnostic by integrating significant biometric features in the identification process. In foetal anomaly diagnosis, manual evaluation of foetal behaviour in ultrasound images is a subjective, slow and error-prone task, especially in the preliminary treatment phases. The effectiveness of this appearance is strictly subject to the attention and the experience of gynaecologists. In this case, automatic methods of image analysis offer the possibility of obtaining a homogeneous, objective and above all fast diagnosis of the foetal head in order to identify pregnancy behaviour. Indeed, we propose a computerised diagnostic method based on morphological characteristics and a supervised classification method to categorise subjects into two groups: normal and affected cases. The presented method is validated on a real integrated microcephaly and dolichocephaly cases. The studied database contains the same gestational age of both normal and abnormal foetuses. The results show that the use of a support vector machine (SVM) classifier is an effective way to enhance recognition and detection for rapid and accurate foetal head diagnostic.

Keywords:

• Biometric measures
• foetal head defects
• supervised classification methods

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the support of Professor Badreddine Bouguerra from Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Reproductive department at Charles Nicole Hospital of Tunis, who provided us a part of the data used in this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.