Retrospective Analysis of a Large-Scale Archive of Ultrasonic Movies for Ischemic Diseases of Neonatal Brain

Retrospective analysis of neonatal cranial ultrasonic movies has been effectively realized by developing a novel movie analysis system. Despite the recognition of the diagnostic potential of neonatal cranial ultrasonic movies, several issues still persist in handling a large-scale archive of approximately 1000 cases. These issues include extensive, redundant computations and inconsistent data. The proposed system was designed to address these issues through a systematic organization of processes. It includes a primary layer for fully-automated preprocessing such as frequency spectrum analysis and several consequent layers for semi-automated retrospective analysis such as detection of probe-stabilized scene and assessment of pulsatile tissues. Four test cases were examined by the conventional and novel systems to evaluate the performance. The results demonstrated that the novel system performed essential tasks three to five times faster, while also providing new capabilities that the conventional system lacks. Overall, the proposed system confirmed a significant improvement of efficiency in retrospective analysis compared with the conventional process flow and the retrospective analysis has been realized to the entire archive for the first time, revealing its clinical applicability for further analysis of ischemic diseases.