Using graphics processing units to enable real-time bone surface extraction from volumetric medical ultrasound image data using local phase features

Previously, we demonstrated the effectiveness of phase symmetry (PS) features for segmentation and localisation of bone fractures in 3D ultrasound for the purpose of orthopaedic fracture reduction surgery. We recently proposed a novel real-time image-processing method of bone surface extraction from local phase features of clinical 3D B-mode ultrasound data. We are presenting a computational study and outline of planned future developments for integration into a computer aided orthopaedic surgery framework.Our image-processing pipeline was implemented on three platforms: (1) using an existing PS extraction C++ algorithm on a dual processor machine with two Xeon x5472 CPUs @ 3GHz with 8GB of RAM, (2) using our proposed method implemented in MATLAB running on the same machine as in (1), and (3) CUDA implementation of our method implemented on a professional GPU (Nvidia Tesla c2050).We ran these three implementations 20 times each on 128×128×128 scans of the iliac crest in live subjects and repeated the proc...