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. 2009 Sep;10(9):648-58.
doi: 10.1631/jzus.B0930162.

A fast automatic recognition and location algorithm for fetal genital organs in ultrasound images

Sheng Tang  1 , Si-ping Chen
Affiliations

A fast automatic recognition and location algorithm for fetal genital organs in ultrasound images

Sheng Tang et al. J Zhejiang Univ Sci B. 2009 Sep.

Abstract

Severe sex ratio imbalance at birth is now becoming an important issue in several Asian countries. Its leading immediate cause is prenatal sex-selective abortion following illegal sex identification by ultrasound scanning. In this paper, a fast automatic recognition and location algorithm for fetal genital organs is proposed as an effective method to help prevent ultrasound technicians from unethically and illegally identifying the sex of the fetus. This automatic recognition algorithm can be divided into two stages. In the 'rough' stage, a few pixels in the image, which are likely to represent the genital organs, are automatically chosen as points of interest (POIs) according to certain salient characteristics of fetal genital organs. In the 'fine' stage, a specifically supervised learning framework, which fuses an effective feature data preprocessing mechanism into the multiple classifier architecture, is applied to every POI. The basic classifiers in the framework are selected from three widely used classifiers: radial basis function network, backpropagation network, and support vector machine. The classification results of all the POIs are then synthesized to determine whether the fetal genital organ is present in the image, and to locate the genital organ within the positive image. Experiments were designed and carried out based on an image dataset comprising 658 positive images (images with fetal genital organs) and 500 negative images (images without fetal genital organs). The experimental results showed true positive (TP) and true negative (TN) results from 80.5% (265 from 329) and 83.0% (415 from 500) of samples, respectively. The average computation time was 453 ms per image.

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Figures

Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.1
Fig.1
US images containing fetal genital organs (highlighted with a dashed square) (a) Male at 20 weeks; (b) Female at 23 weeks; (c) Female at 25 weeks; (d) Male at 25 weeks; (e) Male at 27 weeks; (f) Male at 27 weeks; (g) Female at 31 weeks; (h) Male at 34 weeks
Fig.2
Fig.2
The local speckle statistics computed on different windows
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.3
Fig.3
The segmentation results from the eight original US fetal images in Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
Fig.4
Fig.4
The selected POIs from Fig.1. Results from (a) Fig.1a; (b) Fig.1b; (c) Fig.1c; (d) Fig.1d; (e) Fig.1e; (f) Fig.1f; (g) Fig.1g; (h) Fig.1h
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