Segmentation of polycystic ovary in ultrasound images

It is important to recognize and diagnose the various forms of ovulatory failure that can contribute to infertility. It is likely that there are many explanations for ovulation failure. One type of failure is polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is an endocrine disorder, which is characterized by the formation of many follicles in the ovary. This disorder seriously affects women´s health, such as obesity, infertility, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. PCOS can be diagnosed using ultrasound imaging, which gives important information about the number of follicles and size. Manual detection of these follicles is laborious and error-prone. In this paper, an improved active contour without edge method is presented which can identify small follicles and fast segmentation. The resulting system is tested on PCOS ultrasound images and results are promising.