Quantification of morphological features in non-contrast-enhanced ultrasound microvasculature imaging

There are significant differences in microvascular morphological features in diseased tissues, such as cancerous lesions, compared to noncancerous tissue. Quantification of microvessel morphological features could play an important role in disease diagnosis and tumor classification. However, analyzing microvessel morphology in ultrasound Doppler is a challenging task due to limitations associated with this technique. Our main objective is to provide methods for quantifying morphological features of microvasculature obtained by ultrasound Doppler imaging. To achieve this goal, we propose multiple image enhancement techniques and appropriate morphological feature extraction methods that enable quantitative analysis of microvasculature structures. Vessel segments obtained by the skeletonization of the regularized microvasculature images are further analyzed to satisfy other constraints, such as vessel segment diameter and length. Measurements of some morphological metrics, such as tortuosity, depend on preserving large vessel trunks. To address this issue, additional filtering methods are proposed. These methods are tested on in vivo images of breast lesion and thyroid nodule microvasculature, and the outcomes are discussed. Initial results show that using vessel morphological features allows for differentiation between malignant and benign breast lesions (p-value < 0.005) and thyroid nodules (p-value < 0.01). This paper provides a tool for the quantification of microvasculature images obtained by non-contrast ultrasound imaging, which may serve as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of some diseases.