INTERACTIVE AUTOMATIC FETAL HEAD MEASUREMENTS FROM ULTRASOUND IMAGES USING MULTIMEDIA COMPUTER-TECHNOLOGY

We have developed a tool to automatically detect inner and outer skull boundaries of a fetal head in ultrasound images, These boundaries are used to measure biparietal diameter (BPD) and head circumference (HC) . The algorithm is based on active contour models and takes 32 s on a Sun SparcStation 20/71, A high-performance desktop multimedia system c alled MediaStation 5000 (MS5000) is used as a model for our future ult rasound subsystem, On the MS5000, the optimized implementation of this algorithm takes 248 ms, The difference (between the computer-measured values on MS5000 and the gold standard) for BPD and HC was 1.43% (sig ma = 1,00%) and 1.96% (sigma = 1.96%), respectively. According to our data analysis, no significant differences exist in the BPD and HC meas urements made on the MS5000 and those measurements made on the Sun Spa rcStation 20/71, Reduction in the overall execution time from 32 s to 248 ms will help making this algorithm a practical ultrasound tool for sonographers, (C) 1997 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine an d Biology.