A system for the automatic measurement of the nuchal translucency thickness from ultrasound video stream of the foetus

Abstract

Nowadays the measurement of the nuchal translucency thickness is being used as part of routine ultrasound scanning during the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, for the screening of chromosomal defects, as trisomy 21. Currently, the measurement is being performed manually by physicians. The measurement can take a long time for being accomplished, needs to be performed by highly skilled operators, and is prone to errors. Semi-automated methods requires that the user manually selects a region of the image containing the nuchal translucency, procedure that is somewhat time consuming. In this paper we present a complete system prototype that is able to perform the measurement of the nuchal translucency thickness without any manual intervention from the operator, operating on the video stream coming out from the ultrasound machine.