In fetal-brain MRI, head-pose changes between prescription and acquisition present a challenge to obtaining the standard sagittal, coronal and axial views essential to clinical assessment. As motion limits acquisitions to thick slices that preclude retrospective resampling, technologists repeat ~55-second stack-of-slices scans (HASTE) with incrementally reoriented field of view numerous times, deducing the head pose from previous stacks. To address this inefficient workflow, we propose a robust head-pose detection algorithm using full-uterus scout scans (EPI) which take ~5 seconds to acquire. Our ~2-second procedure automatically locates the fetal brain and eyes, which we derive from maximally stable extremal regions (MSERs). The success rate of the method exceeds 94% in the third trimester, outperforming a trained technologist by up to 20%. The pipeline may be used to automatically orient the anatomical sequence, removing the need to estimate the head pose from 2D views and reducing delays during which motion can occur.

中文翻译：

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用于胎儿脑 MRI 自动切片处方的快速头部姿势检测

在胎儿大脑 MRI 中，处方和采集之间的头部姿势变化对获得临床评估所必需的标准矢状、冠状和轴向视图提出了挑战。由于运动将采集限制在排除回顾性重采样的厚切片，技术人员重复约 55 秒的切片堆栈扫描 (HASTE) 并多次重新定向视野，从以前的堆栈中推断出头部姿势。为了解决这种低效的工作流程，我们提出了一种使用全子宫侦察扫描 (EPI) 的稳健头部姿势检测算法，该算法需要大约 5 秒的时间来获取。我们约 2 秒的程序自动定位胎儿的大脑和眼睛，这是我们从最大稳定极值区域 (MSER) 中得出的。该方法在孕晚期的成功率超过 94%，比训练有素的技术人员高出 20%。