Segmentation of medical ultrasound images: Novel level set approach

In this paper, a novel level set approach is proposed for segmentation of medical ultrasound images. Considering the speckle noise and low contrast of medical ultrasound images, we add an extra stopping term into the formulation of level set evolution without re-initialization (LSEWR). Compared with traditional active contour models, the proposed level set approach has more flexible initialization and larger capture range. It is insensitive to the initial contour and larger time step can be used. The initial contour can be easily initialized as a circle or rectangular, thus achieving semi-automatic segmentation of ultrasound medical images. The experimental results show that the proposed method can be used for semi-automatic and high-quality segmentation of medical ultrasound images.