Energy functions for the segmentation of ultrasound volume data using active rays

In this paper we address the problem of ultrasound volume data segmentation by means of active contours. The segmentation is performed on an slice-by-slice basis but exploiting the high correlation that exists across nearby slices. We have used active rays to alleviate the computational load of the optimization process. Classical energy functions have trouble finding the optimal solution in speckle imagery. We therefore propose new energy functions that work well under this type of images. Moreover, we propose both a probabilistic relaxation scheme and a heuristic search of the minimal energy configuration to end up making a hybrid use of both. We compare two rendered surfaces to illustrate the smoothness of our reconstruction.