Use of morphological image processing techniques for the measurement of a fetal head from ultrasound images

摘要

An automatic method is described which uses a class of nonlinear image processing filters known as morphological operators to connect and isolate the fetal head within an ultrasound image and generate a measurement of its diameter. This measurement is a valuable indicator in estimating the gestational age of the infant. The advantage of this approach is that it provides both an automatic and a consistent method to determine these measurements. Currently the measurement is made by hand and is highly subjective. A comparison with the existing manual approach is presented.