Artifact Detection in Lung Ultrasound: An Analytical Approach

Abstract

Lung ultrasound is used to detect various artifacts in the lungs that support the diagnosis of different conditions. There is ongoing research to support the automatic detection of such artifacts using machine learning. We propose a solution that uses analytical computer vision methods to detect two types of lung artifacts, namely A- and B-lines. We evaluate the proposed approach on the POCUS dataset and data acquired from a hospital. We show that by using the Fourier transform, we can analyze lung ultrasound images in real-time and classify videos with an accuracy above 70%. We also evaluate the method’s applicability for segmentation, showcasing its high success rate for B-lines (89% accuracy) and its shortcomings for A-line detection. We then propose a hybrid solution that uses a combination of neural networks and analytical methods to increase accuracy in horizontal line detection, emphasizing the pleura.