Wall Position And Thickness Estimation From Two-dimensional Echocardiograms
AbrtmctThis paper presents a model based method for endocardial (inner) and epicardial (outer) contour estimation in two-dimensional echocardiographic images. The setup herein introduced is appropriate to differeut echocardiographic views. In this work, however, it was fine-tuned for parasternal short axis view at the papillary muscle level. We use the Bayesian formulation and the maximum a priori (MAP) criterion. Contours are assumed one-dimensional noncausal Gauss-Markov random fields. The observed image pixels are modelled as Rayleigh distributed random variables with means depending on their positions (inside endocardium, between endocardium and pericardium, or outside pericardium). The method is implemented on an ordiuary workstation, and takes less than 10 seconds to estimate the inner and outer borders. Results with simulated and real images are presented.