CAPSU: A completely automated method for carotid plaques segmentation in ultrasound images

Author

Galluzzo, Francesca ; Corsi, Cristiana ; Morizzo, Carmela ; De Marchi, Luca ; Testoni, Nicola ; Speciale, Nicolo ; Masetti, Guido

Author_Institution

DEI-Dept. of Electr., Electron. & Inf. Eng., Univ. of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

fYear

2014

Firstpage

309

Lastpage

312

Abstract

The accurate carotid plaques segmentation (CPs-S) is essential in the ultrasound (US)-guided carotid atherosclerosis diagnosis. In this work, we propose CAPSU: a completely automated method for CPs-S in US images. The core of the method is an innovative initialization procedure that exploits carotid wall motion analysis to automatically initialize a level-set segmentation algorithm. A strain analysis is also used to improve the initialization procedure. CAPSU performance with and without the strain analysis were evaluated on US data from 8 patients and compared with manual contouring from an expert sonographer. Results show the CAPSU effectiveness as accurate and reliable tool for fully automated CPs-S in US images.

Keywords

biomechanics; biomedical ultrasonics; blood vessels; deformation; diseases; feature extraction; image motion analysis; image segmentation; medical image processing; set theory; CAPSU effectiveness; CAPSU performance evaluation; US image; US-guided carotid atherosclerosis diagnosis; automatic level-set segmentation algorithm initialization; carotid plaque segmentation accuracy; carotid wall motion analysis; completely automated carotid plaque segmentation; expert sonographer; fully automated CP-S tool; manual contouring; strain analysis; ultrasound image; Carotid arteries; Educational institutions; Image segmentation; Manuals; Motion segmentation; Strain; Ultrasonic imaging;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computing in Cardiology Conference (CinC), 2014

ISSN

2325-8861

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-4346-3

Type

conf

Filename

7043041