Robust boundary detection and tracking of left ventricles on ultrasound images using active shape model and ant colony optimization

Abstract

Information regarding the motion, strain and synchronization are important for cardiac diagnosis and therapy. Extraction of such information from ultrasound images remains an open problem till today. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to extract the boundaries of left ventricles and track these boundaries in ultrasound image sequences. The initial detection of boundaries was performed by an active shape model scheme. Subsequent refinement of the boundaries was done by using local variance information of the images. The main objective of this paper is the formulation of a new boundary tracking algorithm using ant colony optimization technique. The experiments conducted on the simulated image sequences and the real cardiac ultrasound image sequences shows a positive and promising result.