Echocardiogram videos: summarization, temporal segmentation and browsing

We present a system for the temporal segmentation, summarization, and browsing of the echocardiogram videos. Echocardiogram videos are video sequences produced by the ultrasound scanning of the heart, and are one of the main modalities of imaging the heart structure. Our approach combines the domain-specific knowledge and the automatic analysis of the spatio-temporal structure of the echocardiogram videos. The videos are temporally sampled using the embedded electrocardiogram graph. The consecutive sampled frames are compared based on the shape of the region of interest and the presence/absence of color to detect the boundaries between the different segments. The content of each segment of the video is summarized into two forms: the static and the dynamic summaries. Finally the summary is displayed in the user interface in an intuitive form for the purpose of browsing. Applications include digital medical image libraries, medical image management, and telemedicine.