New software which, for example, automatically recognises the vessel wall requires a large number of ultrasound images in order to learn from and be tested on. When using images of patients, an expert must first manually mark out the vessel wall. This is very time-consuming and does not yield a clear-cut result, as different doctors always draw that boundary slightly differently.
The solution: a digitally recreated blood vessel
Van Aarle digitally recreated blood vessels and simulated what an ultrasound scan of them would look like. Because the researchers design the model themselves, they know exactly where the wall is, how big the vessel is and how it moves. This allows software to be tested against an image for which the correct result is already known. She compared her simulations with ultrasound images taken during nearly thirty operations on patients with an abdominal aortic aneurysm at the Catharina Hospital. Those images were recorded from inside the blood vessel.
Cooperation as a foundation
The research took place at the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Centre (e/MTIC). Within this centre, the Catharina Hospital, TU/e, Philips, Máxima Medical Centre and Kempenhaeghe work together to bring medical innovations to the clinic more quickly.
Basis for further research
Patients will not notice any immediate effects of this research. However, it does lay the foundations for new equipment, software and AI applications. The simulation toolbox that has been developed is already being used in various follow-up projects. Detailed simulations do, however, require a great deal of computing power. Further research will therefore need to determine just how much detail is actually required.
