A Workstation-Based System for 2-D Echocardiography Visualization and Image Processing

Parameters of cardiac function can be drawn from the analysis of echocardiographic image sequences, especially the motion of the ventricular wall, heart wall thickness, and shape parameters. Automatic image analysis and visualization allows reduced manual operations and, above all, ensures objectivity and repetition of analysis, which is essential when one wishes to calculate parameters based on variations, i.e., on image sequence analysis. In this paper, a system and the related software package for interactive echocardiographic image analysis and visualization are illustrated and discussed. Furthermore, the full model for smoothing, edge enhancement, and contour detection is discussed and a new technique based on the heat anisotropic diffusion model is presented. The results of automatic detection of the left ventricle contours are presented and discussed. © 1990 IEEE