Ultrasound imaging method for internal jugular vein measurement and estimation of circulating blood volume.

Purpose: Evaluation of circulating blood volume is important in assessing the status of patients. Although some studies have suggested that ultrasound images of the internal jugular vein (IJV) can be used for the analysis of circulating blood volume, accurate extraction of IJV is necessary to reduce errors. Therefore, this study was designed to develop a new algorithm for dynamic segmentation of IJV and determine appropriate indicators to evaluate the circulating blood volume. Methods: Our algorithm is based on snake and speckle tracking models. As the region of interest (ROI) of the control points of the snake tracking algorithm was dynamically moved using speckle tracking, ROI size can be decreased leading to a reduction in the tracking error. Some experiments were performed to validate our algorithm. Subsequently, the algorithm was used for the experiment simulating dehydration state among 11 subjects. Results: Results of the validation experiment suggest that our algorithm showed higher performance for IJV extraction compared with standard methods. Furthermore, it was revealed that some indices such as the average area of IJV were related to the dehydration state of subjects. Conclusion: This study proposed a new algorithm, which was based on snake and speckle tracking models, for dynamic extraction of IJV in ultrasound images. In addition to algorithm validation, it was suggested that some indices the ultrasound image of IJV could be used for the evaluation of the circulating blood volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]