Interpolation of Missing Part of Human Follicle Border on Ultrasonic B-Mode Image by Iterative Revision

In clinical infertility treatments, assessment of ovarian follicle growth by ultrasonography is important. In order to measure the geometrical characteristics of the human follicle, such as the area of the cross-sectional image and the volume inside the follicle, a method based on manual tracing of the follicle contour from the ultrasonic B mode image is widely used. However, the observable ultrasonic B mode images are sometimes imperfect and some parts of the follicle border are missing due to the existence of the acoustic shadow. In this paper, a method that interpolates the missing part of the follicle border from the known part is proposed. This method uses a priori information of the follicle, which is usually known in actual cases: (1) the follicle's surface is so smooth that its border is assumed to be a smooth closed curve; and (2) the position of the follicle's center is roughly predicted in advance in the ultrasonic B-mode image. In the proposed method, the missing part of the human follicle border is interpolated from the known part by applying an iterative revision so as to satisfy the smoothness condition of the follicle. This method is also applied to three-dimensional image reconstruction of the human follicle.