Automatic ultrasound assessment of placenta previa during the third trimester for rural areas
Abstract
Placenta previa describes the abnormal implantation of the placenta in the uterus of pregnant women, entirely or partially obstructing the internal cervical os. For clinical significance, it is suggested to assess the final placental location in the third trimester. In rural areas of developing countries, the absence of radiologists and sophisticated ultrasound systems make difficult the diagnosis of this condition. Ten pregnant women in their third trimester (age range of 22-43 years) were enrolled in this study. A volume sweep imaging obstetric protocol based on eight free-hand sweeping (three transverse and five longitudinal throughout the maternal abdominal area) was used. The acquisition was performed using a portable ultrasound scanner by a non-specialist. The dataset consisted of eight videos per volunteer and one hundred frames per video on average. Placental segmentation was carried out using the U-Net deep learning architecture and the leave one out cross-validation approach. The output masks combined with the knowledge of the acquisition protocol allowed to assess the spatial location likelihood of the placenta in the uterus, which is represented by a heat map. The method showed a sensitivity of 75% and a specificity of 92 %. Albeit the need for further validation, this approach may automatically warn of possible risks in childbirth, giving the chance to notify the specialist.
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The data set in the single study on automatic ultrasound assessment of placenta previa included only 10 study participants.
“However, the data set included only 10 study participants.”
From Automatic Placenta Localization From Ultrasound Imaging in a Resource-Limited Setting Using a Predefined Ultrasound Acquisition Protocol and Deep Learning (2022) · cites this paper as Saavedra et al. 2020
There is a single study on automatic ultrasound assessment of placenta previa (Saavedra et al. 2020) in which a localization algorithm for identifying potential cases of placenta previa was proposed.
“There is a single study on automatic ultrasound assessment of placenta previa (Saavedra et al. 2020) in which a localization algorithm for identifying potential cases of placenta previa was proposed.”
From Automatic Placenta Localization From Ultrasound Imaging in a Resource-Limited Setting Using a Predefined Ultrasound Acquisition Protocol and Deep Learning (2022) · cites this paper as Saavedra et al. 2020
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Saavedra, A. C., Arroyo, J., Tamayo, L., Egoavil, M., Ramos, B., & Castaneda, B.
- Affiliations
- Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PE)
- Venue
- 2020 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2020-09-07
- Pages
- 1-4
- ISSN
- 1948-5719 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3100085565
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 7
- FWCI
- 0.62
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Medical Image Segmentation Techniques
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Maternal and fetal healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Keywords
- placenta previa, third trimester, portable ultrasound, rural health care, U-Net, prenatal ultrasound, resource-limited settings
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