Stent tracking in ultrasound stream images

Many researchers developed systems to help stent deployment procedure. But mostly are invasive. In this paper, a system to identify and track the movement of stent in ultrasound B-mode images is proposed. Ultrasound is used because it does not expose to radiation risk. In our experiment, the beef of a cattle is used as the medium where the stent will be tracked. The stent is scanned using the short axis out-of-plane technique so that the transducer is perpendicular to the stent. The stent is then identified on the scanned frame. The shape of the stent in the scanned frame and the intensity of a certain area are used as tracking features. The displacement of the stent in every frame is estimated using the Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD). The experiment shows that the tracking system using SAD produces the least error than without SAD. Although it’s early, this research may lead to the development of less invasive stent deployment guiding system.