Prior based cardiac valve segmentation in echocardiographic sequences: Geodesic active contour guided by region and shape prior

Abstract

This paper presents a segmentation of cardiac valve structure method in ultrasound sequence. Prior knowledge on certain complex object is a powerful guidance in image segmentation. We represent region and shape prior of the cardiac valve in a form of speed field and incorporate it into image segmentation process within level set framework. Region prior constrains the zero level set evolving in certain region and shape prior pulls the curve to the ideal contour. Experiments on a large quantity of 3D valve sequences show that the algorithm improves accuracy of segmentation and reduces the manual intervention. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.