Endocardial boundary extraction in left ventricular echocardiographic images using fast and adaptive B-spline snake algorithm.

PURPOSE

A fast and robust algorithm was developed for automatic segmentation of the left ventricular endocardial boundary in echocardiographic images. The method was applied to calculate left ventricular volume and ejection fraction estimation.

METHODS

A fast adaptive B-spline snake algorithm that resolves the computational concerns of conventional active contours and avoids computationally expensive optimizations was developed. A combination of external forces, adaptive node insertion, and multiresolution strategy was incorporated in the proposed algorithm. Boundary extraction with area and volume estimation in left ventricular echocardiographic images was implemented using the B-spline snake algorithm. The method was implemented in MATLAB and 50 medical images were used to evaluate the algorithm performance. Experimental validation was done using a database of echocardiographic images that had been manually evaluated by experts.

RESULTS

Comparison of methods demonstrates significant improvement over conventional algorithms using the adaptive B-spline technique. Moreover, our method reached a reasonable agreement with the results obtained manually by experts. The accuracy of boundary detection was calculated with Dice's coefficient equation (91.13%), and the average computational time was 1.24 s in a PC implementation.

CONCLUSION

In sum, the proposed method achieves satisfactory results with low computational complexity. This algorithm provides a robust and feasible technique for echocardiographic image segmentation. Suggestions for future improvements of the method are provided.