Panoramic Reconstruction of B-mode Lung Ultrasound Images Acquired using a Longitudinal Volume Sweep Imaging Protocol

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has already affected more than 300 million people worldwide. Medical imaging shortage affects an estimated of 4 billion people, especially in rural and remote areas (RAs), limiting diagnostic assessment of respiratory illness. Lung ultrasound imaging (LUS) together with volume sweep imaging (VSI) acquisition protocols have been successfully piloted as a solution for lung screening in RAs eliminating the need for trained operators and on-site radiologists. Nevertheless, this protocol requires the acquisition of 12 videos for 6 areas with both longitudinal and transverse positions of the transducer. Nonetheless, bandwidth limitations can hamper the transmission of these videos for remote interpretation. This work aimed to developed a stitching algorithm capable of generating a panoramic reconstruction of LUS cine clips. The results show reconstructions with minimal loss of information as 92.5% of the panoramic images conserved the presence of A-lines. These results show that LUS can be represented as an image without significantly compromising its quality. This can be useful to overcome bandwidth issues as well as improve the time on lung assessment of the patient.