A DISCRETE REGION COMPETITION APPROACH INCORPORATING WEAK EDGE ENHANCEMENT FOR ULTRASOUND IMAGE SEGMENTATION

Abstract

Ultransound images are difficult for analysis due to their complex textures and speckle noises. Taking into account these two characters, in this paper, we present a new region-based approach for ultransound image segmentation. The proposed approach si composed of two primary algorithms, namely, discrete region competition features four techniques, i.e., region competition, statistics modeling, early vision modeling, and discrete concept. To prevent a region from flooding out of teh desired area, weak edges located on the slowly varying slope are enhanced according to their position on the slope and the length of the slope. The discrete region competition incorporation weak edge enhancement has been verified on clinical ultransound images and promising results have been achieved.