Localizing Region-Based Level-set Contouring for Common Carotid Artery in Ultrasonography

This work developed a fully-automated and efficient method for detecting contour of common carotid artery in the cross section view of two-dimensional B-mode sonography. First, we applied a preprocessing filter to the ultrasound image for the sake of reducing speckle. An adaptive initial contouring method was then performed to obtain the initial contour for level set segmentation. Finally, the localizing region-based level set segmentation automatically extract ed the precise contours of common carotid artery . The proposed method evaluate d 130 ultrasound images from three healthy volunteers and the segmentation results were compared to the boundaries outlined by an expert. Preliminary results show ed that the method described here could identify the contour of common carotid artery with satisfactory accuracy in this dataset.

[1]  Purang Abolmaesumi,et al.  Real-time extraction of carotid artery contours from ultrasound images , 2000, Proceedings 13th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems. CBMS 2000.

[2]  A Fenster,et al.  Three-dimensional ultrasound of carotid atherosclerosis: semiautomated segmentation using a level set-based method. , 2011, Medical physics.

[3]  Xin Yang,et al.  Ultrasound Common Carotid Artery Segmentation Based on Active Shape Model , 2013, Comput. Math. Methods Medicine.

[4]  Donal B. Downey,et al.  Segmentation of carotid artery in ultrasound images , 2000, Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (Cat. No.00CH37143).

[5]  J. Astola,et al.  Vector median filters , 1990, Proc. IEEE.

[6]  Yongmin Kim,et al.  A methodology for evaluation of boundary detection algorithms on medical images , 1997, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[7]  A. Simon,et al.  Distribution of ultrasonographically-assessed dimensions of common carotid arteries in healthy adults of both sexes. , 2000, Atherosclerosis.

[8]  Scott E Kasner,et al.  Carotid Artery Diameter in Men and Women and the Relation to Body and Neck Size , 2006, Stroke.

[9]  Allen R. Tannenbaum,et al.  Localizing Region-Based Active Contours , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

[10]  Mahmoud R. El-Sakka,et al.  Carotid Artery Ultrasound Image Segmentation Using Fuzzy Region Growing , 2005, ICIAR.

[11]  George D. Stetten,et al.  Fully Automated Common Carotid Artery and Internal Jugular Vein Identification and Tracking Using B-Mode Ultrasound , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.