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An augmented-reality system prototype for guiding transcranial Doppler ultrasound examination

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Abstract

Ultrasound (US) is a popular medical imaging technique in the clinic due to its low cost, high portability, and real-time diagnostic value. A special type of ultrasound technique, transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound can be used to measure blood flows in cerebral blood vessels through acoustic bone windows of the intact human skull. Although TCD ultrasound is commonly used to diagnose and monitor a range of neurovascular conditions, such as stroke, interpretation of the image content in the TCD scans and quick localization of the targeted blood vessels with it can be difficult due to inherent challenges of its unique image contrasts, relatively low image quality, and 2D nature of the technique in relation to the 3D brain anatomy that is invisible to the clinician. These drawbacks may hinder the efficiency and even accuracy of the TCS examinations, especially for novel users. To render the procedure more efficient and intuitive, we developed a prototype of augmented-reality system to guide the procedure by fusing a population-averaged probabilistic blood vessel atlas with camera footages of the patient. The system prototype was demonstrated with healthy subjects, and is expected to facility the clinical TCD examination, as well as to help in the educational context for new clinicians and clinical technicians.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robarts Research Institute, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7, Canada

    Yiming Xiao

  2. McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Simon Drouin, Ian J. Gerard, Vladimir Fonov, Bérengère Aubert-Broche, Yuhan Ma & D. Louis Collins

  3. Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    Marta Kersten-Oertel

  4. Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neurology, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada

    Donatella Tampieri

Authors
  1. Yiming Xiao
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  2. Simon Drouin
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  3. Ian J. Gerard
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  4. Vladimir Fonov
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  5. Bérengère Aubert-Broche
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  6. Yuhan Ma
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  7. Marta Kersten-Oertel
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  8. Donatella Tampieri
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  9. D. Louis Collins
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yiming Xiao.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Xiao, Y., Drouin, S., Gerard, I.J. et al. An augmented-reality system prototype for guiding transcranial Doppler ultrasound examination. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 27789–27805 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-5990-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-5990-9

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