Bone Enhancement in Ultrasound Based on 3D Local Spectrum Variation for Percutaneous Scaphoid Fracture Fixation

This paper proposes a 3D local phase-symmetry-based bone enhancement technique to automatically identify weak bone responses in 3D ultrasound images of the wrist. The objective is to enable percutaneous fixation of scaphoid bone fractures, which occur in \(90\,\%\) of all carpal bone fractures. For this purpose, we utilize 3D frequency spectrum variations to design a set of 3D band-pass Log-Gabor filters for phase symmetry estimation. Shadow information is also incorporated to further enhance the bone surfaces compared to the soft-tissue response. The proposed technique is then used to register a statistical wrist model to intraoperative ultrasound in order to derive a patient specific 3D model of the wrist bones. We perform a cadaver study of 13 subjects to evaluate our method. Our results demonstrate average mean surface and Hausdorff distance errors of 0.7 mm and 1.8 mm, respectively, showing better performance compared to two state-of-the art approaches. This study demonstrate the potential of the proposed technique to be included in an ultrasound-based percutaenous scaphoid fracture fixation procedure.