A computer-aided tool for automatic volume estimation of hematoma using non-contrast brain CT scans

• Published in: Biomedical physics & engineering express Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 45011 - 45021
• Main Authors: Nag, Manas K, Koley, Subhranil, Sadhu, Anup K, Dutta, Pranab K, Holsouser, Barbara, Ashwal, Stephen, Ghosh, Nirmalya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England IOP Publishing 01.07.2023
• Subjects: ABC/2; automated volume calculation; Brain - diagnostic imaging; Cerebral Hemorrhage - diagnostic imaging; Computers; Hematoma - diagnostic imaging; Hemorrhage; Humans; NCCT; Tomography, X-Ray Computed - methods; automated volume calculation; NCCT; Hemorrhage; ABC/2
• ISSN: 2057-1976; 2057-1976
• DOI: 10.1088/2057-1976/acd256

The computation of hematoma volume is the key parameter for treatment planning of Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) imaging is routinely used for the diagnosis of ICH. Hence, the development of computer-aided tools for three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography (CT) image analysis is essential to estimate the gross volume of hematoma. We propose a methodology for automatic estimation of the hematoma volume from 3D CT volumes. Our approach integrates two different methods, multiple abstract splitting (MAS) and seeded region growing (SRG) to develop a unified hematoma detection pipeline from pre-processed CT volumes. The proposed methodology was tested on 80 cases. The volume was estimated from the delineated hematoma region, validated against the ground-truth volumes, and compared with those obtained from the conventional ABC/2 approach. We also compared our results with the U-Net model (supervised technique) to show the applicability of the proposed method. The volume calculated from manually segmented hematoma was considered the ground truth. The correlation coefficient between the volume obtained from the proposed algorithm and the ground truth is 0.86, which is equivalent to the value resulting from the comparison between the volume calculated by ABC/2 and the ground truth. The experimental results of the proposed unsupervised approach are comparable to the deep neural architecture (U-Net models). The average computation time was 132.76 ± 14 seconds. The proposed methodology provides a fast and automatic estimation of hematoma volume, which is similar to the baseline user-guided ABC/2 approach. Implementation of our method does not demand a high-end computational setup. Thus, recommended in clinical practice for computer-assistive volume estimation of hematoma from 3D CT volumes and can be implemented in a simple computer system.