Ultrasound Bone Segmentation: A Scoping Review of Techniques and Validation Practices

Ultrasound bone segmentation is an important yet challenging task for many clinical applications. Several works have emerged attempting to improve and automate bone segmentation, which has led to a variety of computational techniques, validation practices and applied clinical scenarios. We characterize this exciting and growing body of research by reviewing published ultrasound bone segmentation techniques. We review 56 articles in detail and categorize and discuss the image analysis techniques that have been used for bone segmentation. We highlight the general trends of this field in terms of clinical motivation, image analysis techniques, ultrasound modalities and the types of validation practices used to quantify segmentation performance. Finally, we present an outlook on promising areas of research based on the unaddressed needs for solving ultrasound bone segmentation.