Search arXiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2503.15861

Sequential Spatial-Temporal Network for Interpretable Automatic Ultrasonic Assessment of Fetal Head during labor

Abstract

The intrapartum ultrasound guideline established by ISUOG highlights the Angle of Progression (AoP) and Head Symphysis Distance (HSD) as pivotal metrics for assessing fetal head descent and predicting delivery outcomes. Accurate measurement of the AoP and HSD requires a structured process. This begins with identifying standardized ultrasound planes, followed by the detection of specific anatomical landmarks within the regions of the pubic symphysis and fetal head that correlate with the delivery parameters AoP and HSD. Finally, these measurements are derived based on the identified anatomical landmarks. Addressing the clinical demands and standard operation process outlined in the ISUOG guideline, we introduce the Sequential Spatial-Temporal Network (SSTN), the first interpretable model specifically designed for the video of intrapartum ultrasound analysis. The SSTN operates by first identifying ultrasound planes, then segmenting anatomical structures such as the pubic symphysis and fetal head, and finally detecting key landmarks for precise measurement of HSD and AoP. Furthermore, the cohesive framework leverages task-related information to improve accuracy and reliability. Experimental evaluations on clinical datasets demonstrate that SSTN significantly surpasses existing models, reducing the mean absolute error by 18% for AoP and 22% for HSD.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Jie Gan, Zhuonan Liang, Jianan Fan, Lisa Mcguire, Caterina Watson, Jacqueline Spurway, Jillian Clarke, Weidong Cai. 2025-03-20. Sequential Spatial-Temporal Network for Interpretable Automatic Ultrasonic Assessment of Fetal Head during labor. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15861

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Bridging the Inter-Domain Gap through Low-Level Features for Cross-Modal Medical Image Segmentation

This paper addresses cross-modal medical image segmentation, focusing on MRI-CT transfer in a source-only domain generalization setting. During training, only source-modality samples are available, while unlabeled target-modality images are used for testing. We propose LowBridge, which builds on the observation that cross-modal images share similar low-level features (e.g. edges) as they depict the same types of anatomical structures. Specifically, we first train a generative model to recover the source images from their edge features, followed by training a segmentation model on the generated source images, separately. At test time, edge features from the target images are input to the pretrained generative model to generate source-style target domain images, which are then segmented using the pretrained segmentation network. Experiments on various public datasets demonstrate that LowBridge achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming ten existing approaches. Ablation studies further show that LowBridge is compatible with different types of generative and segmentation models, suggesting its generalizability and potential to benefit from future advances in these models. The code will be available at https://github.com/JoshuaLPF/LowBridge.

eess.IV↗

Revolutionizing Diffusion MRI Microstructure Mapping via Global Inversion

Diffusion MRI microstructure mapping (MM) is conventionally solved voxel by voxel, ignoring the fact that tissue microstructure forms a spatially organized field. This isolation leaves each estimation problem ill-posed and nonconvex. We instead cast MM as a single global inverse problem, reconstructing the entire parameter field jointly from all measurements of a subject. An untrained neural representation supplies implicit spatial priors and eases the nonconvex optimization, requiring no training data, while coregistered T1-weighted anatomy contributes structural guidance that is freely available in standard protocols. On both synthetic and in-vivo data, our method compares favorably with established voxel-wise and learning-based baselines, suggesting global inversion is a promising alternative.

eess.IV↗

LC3EM: Long-Range Context Extrapolation Enhanced Entropy Model for Coordinate-based Overfitting Image Codecs

Coordinate-based overfitting image codecs have attracted increasing attention for their low decoding complexity and independence from cross-image generalization. However, representative approaches such as COOL-CHIC face an inherent entropy-modeling trade-off: lightweight models have limited capacity, while more expressive ones incur additional bitrate overhead from transmitting image-specific parameters. Inspired by the prediction mechanism in traditional codecs, we propose a new entropy-modeling strategy that introduces complementary prediction modes with region-adaptive soft mode selection, rather than relying on a single learned predictor to model diverse types of redundancy. Based on this concept, we develop a Long-Range Context Extrapolation Enhanced Entropy Model (LC3EM), which can be integrated into coordinate-based overfitting codecs. Specifically, a parameter-free Neighborhood-based Linear Extrapolation Mode (NLEM) complements the tiny MLP-based local predictor to exploit long-range contextual redundancy and strongly directional structures. A Minimum-Entropy-Inspired Continuous Mode Selection strategy is designed to adaptively fuse these two complementary modes, while requiring the transmission of only the parameters of a single additional linear layer. Moreover, to alleviate the mismatch between training-time relaxed and actual discrete quantization, we introduce a lightweight iterative latent rounding refinement stage to improve compression performance. Experiments demonstrate consistent improvements across diverse benchmarks, particularly on highly regular computer-generated images. When integrated with COOL-CHIC 4.0, the proposed method achieves BD-rate gains of -3.43\% and -7.69\% on the SIQAD and API datasets, respectively. With COOL-CHIC 5.0 as the backbone, the corresponding gains are -2.88\% and -3.15\%, respectively. The code will be made publicly available soon.

eess.IV↗