A multiresolution framework for ultrasound image segmentation by combinative active contours

We propose a novel multiresolution framework for ultrasound image segmentation in this paper. The framework exploits both local intensity and local phase information to tackle the degradations of ultrasound images. First, multiresolution scheme is adopted to build a Gaussian pyramid for each speckled image. Speckle noise is gradually smoothed out at higher levels of the pyramid. Then local intensity-driven active contours are employed to locate the coarse contour of the target from the coarsest image, followed by local phase-based geodesic active contours to further refine the contour in finer images. Compared with traditional gradient-based methods, phase-based methods are more suitable for ultrasound images because they are invariant to variations in image contrast. Experimental results on left ventricle segmentation from echocardiographic images demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model.