S-CycleGAN: Semantic Segmentation Enhanced CT-Ultrasound Image-to-Image Translation for Robotic Ultrasonography

Ultrasound imaging is pivotal in various medical diagnoses due to its non-invasive nature and safety. In clinical practice, the accuracy and precision of ultrasound image analysis are critical. Recent advancements in deep learning are showing great capacity of processing medical images. However, the data hungry nature of deep learning and the shortage of high-quality ultrasound image training data suppress the development of deep learning based ultrasound analysis methods. To address these challenges, we introduce an advanced deep learning model, dubbed S-CycleGAN, which generates high-quality synthetic ultrasound images from computed tomography (CT) data. This model incorporates semantic discriminators within a CycleGAN framework to ensure that critical anatomical details are preserved during the style transfer process. The synthetic images produced are used to augment training datasets for semantic segmentation models and robot-assisted ultrasound scanning system development, enhancing their ability to accurately parse real ultrasound imagery.