A hybrid method to segment common carotid arteries from 3D ultrasound images

A hybrid method is used to evaluate atherosclerosis through a mathematical morphology approach and GVF-Snake method. Common carotid artery (CCA) segmentation requires outlining the intima and adventitia contours on the transverse view of B-mode ultrasound (US) images. The lumen and adventitia contours are segmented using a morphology and GVF-Snake methods, respectively. Upon analyzing ten separate patient data sets demonstrate that a comparison between the proposed method and the traditional approach (manual contouring) on 110 transverse images of the CCA showed a mean absolute distance (MAD) of 0.67±0.17mm for lumen and 0.64 ± 0.19mm for adventitia. Their Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) values are 92.7%±2.3% and 90.3%±3.5% for lumen and adventitia segmentation, respectively. These values are in good agreement with clinical standards.