Patent Document ID: 9924927
Application ID: 15049935
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determining a thickness of a wall of an artery of a subject, comprising: automatically selecting a subset of a plurality of frames of an ultrasound video of the wall of the artery on the basis of a corresponding R-wave in a QRS complex of an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal of the subject displayed in the plurality of frames, the subset comprising a plurality of end-diastolic ultrasound frames (EUFs), using a machine-based artificial neural network; locating automatically a region of interest (ROI) in each frame in the subset using the machine-based artificial neural network; and measuring automatically a thickness of the wall of the artery in each ROI using the machine-based artificial neural network, wherein locating automatically the ROI in each frame in the subset of the plurality of frames of the ultrasound video of the wall of the artery, using a machine-based artificial neural network, comprises: estimating, simultaneously, the location of the ROI in each frame of the subset, and a location of a carotid bulb of the subject's common carotid artery (CCA) as a contextual constraint comprises extracting image patches from each frame in the subset; extracting training patches centered around the locations of the carotid bulb and the ROI in each image patch; extracting background patches from a grid of points away from the locations of the carotid bulb and the ROI in each image patch; and labeling and supplying the image patches, training patches, and background patches to the machine-based artificial neural network to train the machine-based artificial neural network.