抽象的な

Automated Thyroid Nodule Segmentation Algorithm for Ultrasound Images

P.Ganesh, J. Jai Jaganath Babu, S.SuganthKannan

This paper presents a novel automated detection of thyroid nodular boundaries of various shapes and resolutions in ultrasound images. Detection of boundaries is required in diagnostic and treatment procedures for thyroid diseases. The boundary detection algorithm is comprised of three stages. In first stage, uniform sticks are applied for contrast enhancement and also for reducing speckle noise in ultrasound thyroid images. The resultant image is then smoothed using fourth order partial differential equation. In the third stage, an edge based active contour model is applied for detection of boundaries. The algorithm was tested on different ultrasound images from patients with thyroid nodules. The results show that the performance of the proposed system provides an efficient delineation of thyroid nodules