METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY MEASURING A FETAL ARTERY AND IN PARTICULAR THE ABDOMINAL AORTA AND DEVICE FOR THE ECHOGRAPHIC MEASUREMENT OF A FETAL ARTERY

摘要

Method for automatically measuring a fetal artery, and in particular the abdominal aorta, which comprises a step for acquiring and storing a sequence cineloop of B-mode images of the fetal abdomen by means of an ultrasonographic device; a step for the approximate identification of the abdominal aorta, by means of a bank of directional filters obtaining an approximate image; a step for the fine identification for each image of said sequence, of the walls of the abdominal aorta, starting from the aforesaid approximate image by means of a calculation model based on the active contours obtaining sequences of segmented images; a step for measuring the diameter and/or the corresponding intima-media thickness of the fetal artery and in particular of the abdominal aorta, conducted at one or more segmented images.