Review on Advanced Techniques in 2-D Fetal Echocardiography: An Image Processing Perspective

Vast advancement of digital ultrasound imaging technology in diagnostic and therapeutic purposes has benefitted from the large development of image processing systems. The conjugation of these two fields has supported the ultrasound imaging system with sophisticated data analysis and visualization in a more lucid and interactive way and opened wide opportunities to new ultrasound imaging applications. In obstetric care, two-dimensional (2-D) fetal echocardiography has become main routine procedure to evaluate cardiac status of the fetus so that any cardiac anomalies can be detected earlier. Seeing that fetal cardiology has its functional uniqueness, fetal echocardiography has its specific assessment techniques that differ from other purposes. Furthermore, the existing conventional fetal echocardiography techniques are found to have some limitations that hamper the accuracy of the assessment. On the other hand, the current rapid development of computer technology in medical imaging, especially in fetal echocardiography, has been proven to improve the image quality and measurement accuracy of the fetal heart imaging. This chapter provides a review of 2-D fetal echocardiography techniques in image processing point of view. We concentrate our review on three main aspects to support diagnosis in 2-D fetal echocardiography: speckle reduction, image segmentation, and image analysis. This review is mainly aimed at appraising several advanced techniques in fetal echocardiography and finding possibilities for future developments in both clinical and research fields.