Extraction of muscle areas from ultrasonographic images using refined histogram stretching and fascia information

Ultrasonography constructs pictures of areas inside the body needs in diagnosis by bouncing ultrasound off internal tissues or organs. In constructing an ultrasonographic image, the weakness of bounding signals induces noises and detailed differences of brightness, so that having a difficulty in detecting and diagnosing with the naked eyes in the analysis of ultrasonogram. Especially, the difficulty is extended when diagnosing muscle areas by using ultrasonographic images in the musculoskeletal test. In this paper, we propose a novel image processing method that computationally extracts a muscle area from an ultrasonographic image to assist in diagnosis. An ultrasonographic image consists of areas corresponding to various tissues and internal organs. The proposed method, based on features of intensity distribution, morphology and size of each area, extracts areas of the fascia, the subcutaneous fat and other internal organs, and then extracts a muscle area enclosed by areas of the fascia. In the extraction of areas of the fascia, a series of image processing methods such as histogram stretching, multiple operation, binarization and area connection by labeling is applied. A muscle area is extracted by using features on relative position and morphology of areas for the fascia and muscle areas. The performance evaluation using real ultrasonographic images and specialistspsila analysis show that the proposed method is able to extract target areas being approximate to real muscle areas.