IEEE transactions on medical imaging
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IEEE Trans Med Imaging · Jan 2018
Automatic Localization of the Needle Target for Ultrasound-Guided Epidural Injections.
Accurate identification of the needle target is crucial for effective epidural anesthesia. Currently, epidural needle placement is administered by a manual technique, relying on the sense of feel, which has a significant failure rate. Moreover, misleading the needle may lead to inadequate anesthesia, post dural puncture headaches, and other potential complications. ⋯ Experimental results of the target localization on planes of 3-D as well as 2-D images have been compared against an expert sonographer. When compared with the expert annotations, the average lateral and vertical errors on the planes of 3-D test data were 1 and 0.4 mm, respectively. On 2-D test data set, an average lateral error of 1.7 mm and vertical error of 0.8 mm were acquired.