Medical research suggests that the area of the IVC and its temporal variation imaged by bedside ultrasound is useful in guiding resuscitation of the critically-ill. Unfortunately, gaps in the vessel wall and intraliminal artifact represents a challenge for both manual and existing algorithm-based segmentation techniques.
In this paper, a novel polar active contour algorithm based on the third image moment is proposed and used for segmentation and tracking of the IVC in ultrasound images. To validate the proposed research in this paper, we compare the proposed algorithm with manual segmentation and three state-of-the-art relevant algorithms. It is shown that the algorithm outperforms other techniques and in some scenarios appear to have advantages over manual segmentation creating the potential to improve medical management of the critically-ill patients.