Artificial neural network: border detection in echocardiography

Being non-invasive and low cost, the echocardiography has become a diagnostic technique largely applied for the determination of the left ventricle systolic and diastolic volumes, which are used indirectly to calculate the left ventricle ejection volume, the cardiac cavities muscular contraction, the regional ejection fraction, the myocardial thickness, and the ventricular mass, etc. However, the image is very noisy, which renders the delineation of the borders of the left ventricle very difficult. While there are many techniques image segmentation, this work chooses the artificial neural network (ANN) since it is not very sensitive to noise. In order to reduce the processing time, the operator selects the region of interest where the neural network will identify the borders. Neighborhood and gradient search techniques are then employed to link the points and the left ventricle contour is traced. The present method has been efficient in detecting the left ventricle borders echocardiography images compared to those whose borders were delineated by the specialists. For good results, it is important to choose properly the areas to be analyzed and the central points of these areas.