3-D heart border delineation and motion estimation using ultrasound transthoracic images for assisted heart diseases diagnoses

We present a technique for detecting the endocardium of the left ventricles and estimating the heart motion from ultrasound images acquired using transesophageal echo-cardiography. The endocardial contours during the cardiac cycles are first detected using a 4-D knowledge-based snake (KB-Snake). We then apply the continuous distance transform neural network (CDTNN) to represent the 3-D endocardial contours at end diastole and quantitatively estimate the subsequent motion of the left ventricles of a human heart. The motion compensated contours are compared with the manually traced contours using the centerline method. Our simulations show very comparable results with human observers.