title: An early vision-based snake model for ultrasound image segmentation.
abstract: Due to the speckles and the ill-defined edges of the object of interest, the classic image-segmentation techniques are usually ineffective in segmenting ultrasound (US) images. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for segmenting general US images that is composed of two major techniques; namely, the early-vision model and the discrete-snake model. By simulating human early vision, the early-vision model can capture both grey-scale and textural edges while the speckle noise is suppressed. By performing deformation only on the peaks of the distance map, the discrete-snake model promises better noise immunity and more accurate convergence. Moreover, the constraint for most conventional snake models that the initial contour needs to be located very close to the actual boundary has been relaxed substantially. The performance of the proposed snake model has been shown to be comparable to manual delineation and superior to that of the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake model.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan. chung@lotus.mc.ntu.edu.tw
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: H H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000379:methods*