The virtual twin of an ultrasound

For patients with cardiovascular disease, ultrasound scans can provide important information about blood vessels. Daniek van Aarle, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, recreates these images using computer simulations. This allows new imaging techniques to be developed and tested more effectively.

Which of these two ultrasound images is real? Daniek van Aarle regularly posed that question to audiences of ultrasound researchers at scientific conferences. On September 29, she defended her PhD research on computer-generated, or virtual, ultrasound images that are almost indistinguishable from real ones. One image came from a patient, while the other was generated entirely by a computer.

“About half the audience got it wrong. It was almost like flipping a coin,” she says. That is exactly what Van Aarle has spent the past four years working on: creating virtual ultrasound images that look as realistic as possible.

At first glance, this may seem like an unusual goal. Why recreate an ultrasound image when real patient scans are available? The answer lies in the development of new technologies. Software designed to automatically identify the wall of a blood vessel, for example, requires large numbers of ultrasound images for training and testing.

Built digitally from scratch

With patient images, experts often need to manually outline the vessel wall before the data can be used. This is time-consuming, and different experts may draw the boundary slightly differently.“If you ask three physicians to outline the same vessel wall, you'll get three slightly different drawings,” says Van Aarle.

With a virtual ultrasound, things are different. Researchers build the digital blood vessel themselves and therefore know exactly where the vessel wall is located, how large the vessel is, and how much it moves. Software can then be tested using images for which the correct answer is already known. “We're essentially trying to fool the computer a little,” Van Aarle explains. “The simulated ultrasound should resemble a real ultrasound as closely as possible.”

For patients, this research will not immediately change how examinations or treatments are performed. Van Aarle is clear about that. “As a patient, you don’t directly encounter my research. We’re still a few steps earlier in the process.” The goal is to provide researchers with better tools for developing new medical devices, software, and artificial intelligence applications.

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