Tracking of the anterior mitral leaflet in echocardiographic sequences using active contours.

Echocardiography assessment of cardiac valves plays a vital role in the diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease. In the vast majority of cases, the mitral valve gets affected, leading to the thickening of its leaflets that may result in the fusion of their tips. This changes the appearance and reduces the mobility of the leaflets, which also reduce the heart efficiency. Quantifying such parameters provides diagnostic insight. To achieve that, the first step is to identify and then track fast moving leaflets. This work is focused on Anterior Mitral Leaflet (AML) tracking. Open ended active contours are employed in this work by removing its boundary conditions. The external and internal energy of the contour is modified that extend the capture range, improve snake energy and encourages the leftmost end point of the contour to converge on the moving tip of the AML. Results show that contour points are tracked accurately with an average error of 4.9 pixels and a standard deviation of 2.1 pixels in 9 fully annotated normal sequences of real children clinical assessments.