Inertial snake for contour detection in ultrasonography images

Abstract

Snakes, or active contour models are used extensively for image segmentation in varied fields. However, some major challenges restrict their use in many fields. The authors propose a new inertial snake model, that introduces an inertial effect of the control points into the snake framework. The proposed inertial force along with the first- and second-order continuity forces controls the spline motion through the concavities and also against weak edge forces. This smart force field, added to the inertial energy framework, posses the ability to adaptively reduce its effect near the true edges, so that the energy minimising spline converges into the edges. A greedy snake has been used for computation of the energy minimising spline. The algorithm has been tested on phantoms and ultrasound images as well. It is shown in the results that the proposed algorithm classifies the object from the background class in most of the images perfectly. Ultrasound images of a lower limb artery of an adult woman have been tested with this algorithm, and also extended for motion tracking.