4-D active contour snake model for object representation from medical images

This work describes a technique for tracking of objects over the three-dimensional space and time domains that can be applied to the field of medical image analysis. We present a new methodology that extends techniques for reconstruction of 3D objects over the spatial domain to incorporate the time domain by introducing a scheme for tracking the surface in moving and deformable objects, which supports semi-automatic segmentation of sets of 3-D medical images. We have applied our method to generate the three-dimensional reconstruction of the carotid artery from sequences of MRI images and digital images from histology studies.