Spectral Analysis of Ultrasound Radiofrequency Backscatter for the Detection of Intercostal Blood Vessels

• Published in: Ultrasound in medicine & biology Vol. 44; no. 7; pp. 1411 - 1422
• Main Authors: Klingensmith, Jon D., Haggard, Asher, Fedewa, Russell J., Qiang, Beidi, Cummings, Kenneth, DeGrande, Sean, Vince, D. Geoffrey, Elsharkawy, Hesham
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Inc 01.07.2018
• Subjects: Adult; Blood Vessels - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Intercostal artery; Intercostal nerve; Intercostal Nerves - blood supply; Intercostal Nerves - diagnostic imaging; Intercostal vein; Pilot Projects; Radiofrequency signals; Reference Values; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Spectral analysis; Tissue characterization; Ultrasonography - methods; Ultrasound; Intercostal artery; Intercostal nerve; Radiofrequency signals; Intercostal vein; Ultrasound; Spectral analysis; Tissue characterization
• ISSN: 0301-5629; 1879-291X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2018.03.007

Spectral analysis of ultrasound radiofrequency backscatter has the potential to identify intercostal blood vessels during ultrasound-guided placement of paravertebral nerve blocks and intercostal nerve blocks. Autoregressive models were used for spectral estimation, and bandwidth, autoregressive order and region-of-interest size were evaluated. Eight spectral parameters were calculated and used to create random forests. An autoregressive order of 10, bandwidth of 6 dB and region-of-interest size of 1.0 mm resulted in the minimum out-of-bag error. An additional random forest, using these chosen values, was created from 70% of the data and evaluated independently from the remaining 30% of data. The random forest achieved a predictive accuracy of 92% and Youden's index of 0.85. These results suggest that spectral analysis of ultrasound radiofrequency backscatter has the potential to identify intercostal blood vessels. (jokling@siue.edu) © 2018 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology