Deformation analysis of human liver blood vessels by applying extension between ultrasound volumes

Abstract

We are working to visualize 3D human blood vessel using ultrasound for an active drug delivery. The purpose of this study is improving the structural analysis method of blood vessel network (BVN) of human liver by applying three-dimensional extension to investigate BVN deformation. For the structural analysis in a BVN, bifurcation points were extracted using point cloud. And for the extension, the connected part was clarified using the position of the probe recorded by a position sensor. In the proposed method, since more accurate structure of BVNs was obtained, a wider liver BVNs from the right lobe to the left lobe could be obtained, where the maximum total path length was about 1200 mm in the largest BVN. Furthermore, we evaluated the deformation of BVNs quantitatively under the specific conditions as changing the subject's posture or breathing state.