Title: Segmentation of Cardiac Ultrasound Images

Speaker: Hemant Tagare (Yale Diagnostic Radiology & EE)

When/where: Thursday, December 2nd, 4:15PM, AKW 200

Abstract: Ultrasound images are formed by recording the echo (i.e.
reflection and backscatter) from an acoustic wave propagating in tissue. These images
contain speckle which contributes to their grainy appearance. Speckle also makes it hard
to segment these images. In this talk, we concentrate on a maximum-likelihood active
contour algorithm and show that speckle creates many local minima that trap the active
contour evolving under gradient descent.We propose a new evolution strategy called
"tunneling descent" that overcomes the limitations of gradient descent and is able to
segment short-axis cardiac ultrasound images. Experimental results validating the new
evolution strategy will be presented.