Automatic Segmentation of 3D Ultrasound Spine Curvature Using Convolutional Neural Network.

Scoliosis is a 3D spinal deformation where the spine takes a lateral curvature, which generates an angle in a coronal plane. For periodic detection of scoliosis, safe and economic imaging modality is needed as continuous exposure to radiative imaging may cause cancer. 3D ultrasound imaging is a cost-effective and radiation-free imaging modality which gives volume projection image. Identification of mid-spine line using manual, semi-automatic and automatic methods have been published. Still, there are some difficulties like variations in human measurement, slow processing of data associated with them. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised ground truth generation and automatic spine curvature segmentation using U- Net. This approach of the application of Convolutional Neural Network on ultrasound spine image, to perform automatic detection of scoliosis, is a novel one.