3D radio frequency ultrasound cardiac segmentation using a linear predictor.

We present an approach for segmenting the left ventricular endocardial boundaries from radio-frequency (RF) ultrasound. The method employs a computationally efficient two-frame linear predictor which exploits the spatio-temporal coherence of the data. By performing segmentation using the RF data we are able to overcome problems due to image inhomogeneities that are often amplified in B-mode segmentation, as well as provide geometric constraints for RF phase-based speckle tracking. We illustrate the advantages of our approach by comparing it to manual tracings of B-mode data and automated B-mode boundary detection using standard (Chan and Vese-based) level sets on echocardiographic images from 28 3D sequences acquired from 6 canine studies, imaged both at baseline and 1 hour post infarction.