Midbrain segmentation in transcranial 3D ultrasound for Parkinson diagnosis

Ultrasound examination of the human brain through the temporal bone window, also called transcranial ultrasound (TC-US), is a completely non-invasive and cost-efficient technique, which has established itself for differential diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease (PD) in the past decade. The method requires spatial analysis of ultrasound hyperechogenicities produced by pathological changes within the Substantia Nigra (SN), which belongs to the basal ganglia within the midbrain. Related work on computer aided PD diagnosis shows the urgent need for an accurate and robust segmentation of the midbrain from 3D TC-US, which is an extremely difficult task due to poor image quality of TC-US. In contrast to 2D segmentations within earlier approaches, we develop the first method for semi-automatic midbrain segmentation from 3D TC-US and demonstrate its potential benefit on a database of 11 diagnosed Parkinson patients and 11 healthy controls.