Tissue Boundary Extraction from Ultrasound Image Using Fuzzy Morphology

Abstract

To develop a boundary extraction method, and to evaluate an appropriateness of the extracted boundary from ultrasound images are significant problems, because of the complex ultrasound characteristics and the obscurity of tissue boundary image. This paper presents a new method for an automatic tissue extraction from medical ultrasound image, whose extracted edge is optimal from the view point of histogram. We pro-pose a novel method of the automatic tissue boundary extraction by using fuzzy morphology in order to cope with the ambiguous and obscure ultrasound image. Regarding a quantitative evaluation which is considered as the statistical characteristic and the gradient or distribution of level from the original image, proper edges or boundaries are detected using multi structuring elements here. We clarify a relation of boundary with structuring element in connection to fuzzy morphology that is used in the boundary extraction.