Detection of Intrauterine Growth Retardation Using Fetal Abdominal Circumference

An enhanced method for automatically extracting the fetal Abdominal Circumference (AC) using the Gradient Vector Field (GVF) snake is presented in this paper. Speckle Reducing Anisotropic Diffusion (SRAD) filter has been used for speckle suppression. The Iterative Randomized Hough Transform has been applied to the image to find the initial contour of fetus abdomen. Finally, the GVF snake adapts the initial contour to the real edges of the abdominal contour. The measured AC has been used to determine the Intrauterine growth retarded (IUGR) fetus which are at higher risk for developmental delays, cardiovascular disease and other problems in adult life.