Deep venous thrombus characterization: Ultrasonography, elastography and scattering operator

Abstract

A thrombus or a blood clot is the result of blood coagulation which is a natural process to prevent bleeding. An inappropriate formation of a thrombus in a deep vein is known as Deep Venous Thrombosis (DVT). The main complication of a DVT is a Pulmonary Embolism (PE) which occurs when a thrombus breaks loose and travels to the lungs. DVT, PE, or both are also known as Venous thromboembolism (VTE). It affects an estimated 300,000-600,000 Individuals just in the United States per year and can cause considerable morbidity and mortality. This multifactorial disease related to advanced age, immobility, surgery or obesity is an important public health issue. Our project is looking to link the VTE epidemiology (risk factors, patient history, PE) to the thrombus structure. To reach our goals, we are collecting ultrasonography (echogenicity) and elastography (stiffness) of human thrombus. This manuscript describes our approach to create and preprocess a database using Toshiba Aplio 500. Our approaches to characterize the thrombus structure with ultrasound images are also described. The feature extraction is made with the scattering operator. Obtained features are then reduced using Principal Component Analysis and are analyzed to evaluate our approach.