Study of the influence of removing speckle noise on the segmentation of uterus ultrasonic images based on Active shape contour algorithm

The study suggests a new approach to segment the ultrasound uterus images to obtain the fetus region. The approach consists of three stages. The first includes the preprocessing in which the speckle noise is removed from the ultrasound images depending on sequential filtering of Gabor filter and median filter. Second, an improved active shape contour independent of edges is applied to segment the uterus images. The last stage is the post processing which depends on the morphological operation to eliminate the undesired region and obtain the region of interest (fetus). The designed system has been tested by means of medical database of ultrasound uterus images downloaded from the ULTRASCAN CENTRE site in Kaloor (India). The experimental tests show that the proposed sequential filtering technique improves the active shape contour algorithm performance significantly, so the system segment the uterus images correctly even in the presence of speckle noise.