Ultrasound Diagnosis of Pelvic Organ Prolapse Using Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Background/Objectives: The aim of this study was to design a fully automated hybrid AI-based method, combining a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a tree-based model (XGBoost), which was capable of diagnosing different pelvic organ prolapses (POPs) in a dynamic two-dimensional ultrasound study from the midsagittal plane. Methods: This was a prospective observational study with 188 patients (99 with POP and 89 without POP). Transperineal pelvic floor ultrasound videos were performed, and normality or POP was defined. These videos were subsequently labeled, and an algorithm was designed to detect POP based on three phases: 1. Segmentation—a CNN was used to locate and identify the visible pelvic organs in each frame of the ultrasound video. The output had a very high dimensionality. 2. Feature engineering and dataset construction—new features related to the position and shape of the organs detected using the CNN were generated. 3. The POP predictive model—this was created from the dataset generated in the feature engineering phase. To evaluate diagnostic performance, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score were considered, along with the degree of agreement with the expert examiner. Results: The best agreements were observed in the diagnosis of cystocele and uterine prolapse (88.1%) and enterocoele (81.4%). The proposed methodology showed an accuracy of 96.43%, an overall accuracy of 98.31%, a recall of 100%, and an F1-score of 98.18% in detecting the presence of POP. However, when differentiating between the various types of POP, we observed that the precision, accuracy, recall, and F1-score were higher when detecting cystocele and uterine prolapse. Conclusions: We have developed the first predictive model capable of diagnosing POP in a dynamic, bi-dimensional ultrasound study from the midsagittal plane using deep learning and machine learning techniques.