A Generalized Hermite Pyramid for Ultrasonic Image Analysis II. Gallstones

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of extracting information regarding the chemical composition of stones in the human gallbladder from in vitro and in vivo B-scan ultrasonic images. The images are subjected to the Hermite pyramid decomposition technique described in Part I (Venkatesh, Y. V., Ultrasonic Imaging, 18, 261–304, 1996). In an attempt to determine the chemical composition of the gallstones, the gradients of the decomposed images are input to an unsupervised classifier. The outputs of the classifier exhibit some interesting patterns that appear to be related to the chemical composition of the gallstones contained in these images.