Multi³: multi-templates siamese network with multi-peaks detection and multi-features refinement for target tracking in ultrasound image sequences

Objective. Radiation therapy requires a precise target location. However, respiratory motion increases the uncertainties of the target location. Accurate and robust tracking is significant for improving operation accuracy. Approach. In this work, we propose a tracking framework Multi3, including a multi-templates Siamese network, multi-peaks detection and multi-features refinement, for target tracking in ultrasound sequences. Specifically, we use two templates to provide the location and deformation of the target for robust tracking. Multi-peaks detection is applied to extend the set of potential target locations, and multi-features refinement is designed to select an appropriate location as the tracking result by quality assessment. Main results. The proposed Multi3 is evaluated on a public dataset, i.e. MICCAI 2015 challenge on liver ultrasound tracking (CLUST), and our clinical dataset provided by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital. Experimental results show that Multi3 achieves accurate and robust tracking in ultrasound sequences (0.75 ± 0.62 mm and 0.51 ± 0.32 mm tracking errors in two datasets). Significance. The proposed Multi3 is the most robust method on the CLUST 2D benchmark set, exhibiting potential in clinical practice.