Echocardiographic image sequence segmentation by multiscale directional snake

In this paper, a new algorithm named as ´multiscale directional snake´ is proposed for segmentation of echocardiographic images by computer. The method makes use of morphological operations to locate the left ventricular center point and region of interest. In addition, a multiscale directional edge map is introduced to improve the performance of snake. The snake is confined within the region of interest during deformation and does not require initialization like traditional snake. Results show that the boundaries obtained using the proposed method fit very closely to the manually traced boundaries.