title: Phase-based level set segmentation of ultrasound images.
abstract: Ultrasonic image segmentation is a difficult problem due to speckle noise, low contrast, and local changes of intensity. Intensity-based methods do not perform particularly well on ultrasound images. However, it has been previously shown that these images respond well to local phase-based methods which are theoretically intensity invariant. Here, we use level set propagation to capture the left ventricle boundaries. The proposed approach uses a new speed term based on local phase and local orientation derived from the monogenic signal, which makes the algorithm robust to attenuation artifact. Furthermore, we use Cauchy kernels, as a better alternative to the commonly used log-Gabor, as pair of quadrature filters for the feature extraction. Results on synthetic and natural data show that the proposed method can robustly handle noise, and captures well the low contrast boundaries.
authors.affiliation: Heudiasyc UMR CNRS 6599, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Centre de Recherche de Royallieu, 60205 Compiègne Cedex, France. ahror.belaid@hds.utc.fr
authors.forename: Ahror
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Belaid
authors.forename: Djamal
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Boukerroui
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Maingourd
authors.forename: Jean-Francois
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Lerallut
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004452:Echocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging