Methods and systems for detecting pleural irregularities in medical images

A method, comprising:

• generating a plurality of lung ultrasound images from ultrasonic signals acquired according to a protocol;
• identifying irregular pleura in each of at least a subset of the plurality of lung ultrasound images in real-time while remaining ultrasonic signals are still being acquired according to the protocol by executing, via a processor of an image processing system, a first set of instructions stored in non-transitory memory of the image processing system to identify, via the processor, borders of a pleural line in each of the plurality of lung ultrasound images based on at least pixel brightness, determine, via the processor, an irregularity score for each location of the pleural line, and identify, via the processor, locations of the pleural line having irregularity scores greater than or equal to a threshold as the irregular pleura;
• visually indicating the irregular pleura in each of at least the subset of the plurality of lung ultrasound images on a display in real-time by executing, via the processor of the image processing system, a second set of instructions stored in the non-transitory memory of the image processing system in response to the identifying the irregular pleura;
• and
• upon completion of the protocol, selecting one image having a greatest relative amount of the irregular pleura from the plurality of lung ultrasound images and outputting only the one image to the display by executing, via the processor of the image processing system, a third set of instructions stored in the non-transitory memory of the image processing system in response to the completion of the protocol.

A system, comprising:

• an ultrasound probe;
• a display device;
• and
• a processor configured with instructions in non-transitory memory that, when executed, cause the processor to:
• acquire ultrasound data via the ultrasound probe according to a lung imaging protocol;
• generate a plurality of images from the ultrasound data in real-time, while at least some ultrasound data are still being acquired;
• evaluate each of the plurality of images to detect irregular pleura of a pleural line in real-time, while, for at least some images of the plurality of images, ultrasound data are still being acquired, the evaluation performed via at least one pixel scoring algorithm that scores each pixel of the pleural line based on a vertical gap of the pleural line at the horizontal location of each pixel and a brightness of each pixel relative to neighboring pixels;
• quantify the irregular pleura in each of the plurality of images in real-time, as the ultrasound data are acquired while, for at least some images of the plurality of images, ultrasound data are still being acquired;
• and
• output a visual indication of the irregular pleura on the display device in real-time, while, for at least some images of the plurality of images, ultrasound data are still being acquired.