ultrasound panorama to monitor neonatal post - hemorrhagic ventricle dilation

Introduction: Preterm infants suffer a number of health risks, one of which is post-hemorrhagic ventricle dilation (PHVD), which occurs when fluctuations in their blood pressure cause a rupture between blood vessels and the ventricles where cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is generated. Blood seeping through the rupture clots, blocking CSF from circulating through the central nervous system. The buildup of fluid puts pressure on the brain, putting the child at risk of lifelong disability if not death. The condition is monitored to determine if/when a stent must be surgically implanted, but monitoring is largely qualitative (tactile pressure examination of the fontanel, 2D ultrasound (2DUS) to estimate ventricle volume) so a more quantitative measure is desirable. Our lab previously validated a method for generating a 3D ultrasound (3DUS) of the ventricular system and semi-automatically segmenting the ventricles for a volume measurement, but it required the entire system to be contained in one image. This was impossible in severe cases. We hypothesize that multiple 3DUS images could be aligned and fused into a single contiguous image such that the semi-automated segmentation algorithm could be used even in extreme cases.