Vessel tracking for ultrasound-based venous pressure measurement

Information concerning central venous pressure (CVP) is crucial in clinical situations, such as cardiac failure, volume overload, and sepsis. The measurement of CVP, however, requires insertion of a catheter through a vein up a vena cava - close to the heart - with related cost and risk of complications. Peripheral venous pressure (PVP) measurement is a technique which allows indirect assessment of CVP without catheterization. However, PVP measurement is cumbersome since it requires several devices, trained medical personnel, and is difficult to perform repeatably. Aiming at an automatic venous pressure measurement system via image-processing, we introduce in this paper a robust vessel tracking algorithm fit for this purpose. The proposed algorithm addresses the challenge of tracking compressed vessels, which is essential for this venous pressure measurement technique. Given this tracking algorithm, initial PVP measurements on healthy volunteers are reported.