Texture Feature Differences between Fresh and Frozen-thawed Ex-vivo Porcine Liver Tissue in B-mode Ultrasonic Imaging.

BACKGROUND

Ultrasound guidance of cryotherapy could be improved if changes of tissue characterization parameters during freezing could be used to monitor freezing profiles and estimate frostbite distributions.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate if B-mode ultrasonic imaging can provide sufficient information to define the damaged zone during cryotherapy by quantifying the differences of texture features between fresh and frozen-thawed porcine liver tissue.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The B-mode ultrasonic images were obtained from ten porcine liver tissue samples before and after frozen-thawing treatment, then 20 texture parameters of the grey level histogram (GLH) and the grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) from each image were extracted and analyzed statistically.

RESULTS

It was found that the differences in two texture parameters between the fresh and frozen-thawed tissue are significant enough for diagnostic purpose (variance: 317.0%, contrast: 144.4%).

CONCLUSION

Texture feature analysis of B-mode ultrasonic images can effectively differentiate the fresh and frozen-thawed porcine liver tissues, which offers a prospect for the future practice of evaluating the effectiveness of cryotherapy using Ultrasound.