Detection of Line Artifacts in Lung Ultrasound Images of COVID-19 Patients Via Nonconvex Regularization

IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2020 Nov;67(11):2218-2229. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.3016092. Epub 2020 Aug 12.

Abstract

In this article, we present a novel method for line artifacts quantification in lung ultrasound (LUS) images of COVID-19 patients. We formulate this as a nonconvex regularization problem involving a sparsity-enforcing, Cauchy-based penalty function, and the inverse Radon transform. We employ a simple local maxima detection technique in the Radon transform domain, associated with known clinical definitions of line artifacts. Despite being nonconvex, the proposed technique is guaranteed to convergence through our proposed Cauchy proximal splitting (CPS) method, and accurately identifies both horizontal and vertical line artifacts in LUS images. To reduce the number of false and missed detection, our method includes a two-stage validation mechanism, which is performed in both Radon and image domains. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method in comparison to the current state-of-the-art B-line identification method, and show a considerable performance gain with 87% correctly detected B-lines in LUS images of nine COVID-19 patients.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Algorithms
  • Artifacts
  • Betacoronavirus
  • COVID-19
  • Coronavirus Infections / diagnostic imaging*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Lung / diagnostic imaging*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Pandemics
  • Pleura / diagnostic imaging
  • Pneumonia, Viral / diagnostic imaging*
  • ROC Curve
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Ultrasonography / methods*

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/R009260/1 and in part by the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Award (IAA) from the University of Bristol. The work of Alin Achim was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (INFHER).