Automatic measurement of intima media thickness with preselection of the most suitable places

This paper describes a novel method for a robust segmentation of layers situated on the far wall of the common carotid artery. Thickness of innermost two layers, called intima-media thickness (IMT), is highly important marker predicting a risk of cardiovascular events. The novelty of the proposed methods resides in an automatic initial determination of suitable places along the artery, where the layers are the most visible and easy to segment. Then, the IMT is measured only in these places and not along whole artery as is performed in almost all state of the art methods. This enables to measure the IMT even in images where the layers are visible only in a part of image. This is one of the main benefits of the proposed method as well as its low computational burdens and low demands on precision of its initialization.