METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REAL TIME CONTOUR TRACKING OF OBJECTS ON VIDEO IMAGES SEQUENCES

摘要

A method and an apparatus to track contours on sequences of video images in real-time. The method is mathematically efficient and is based on an operator which is robust against noise. Moreover, the new method does not introduce strong constraints on the shape of the object and can be used to track the contours of moving rigid objects as well as the contours of moving deformable objects. The contour of the structure under examination is determined automatically, in order to estimate the indices of interest of the organ associated to the contour and to display the results in real-time. To obtain real time performances an apparatus is provided based on a standard Personal Computer which was equipped with a DSP board. The PC provides a suitable environment for the development of a flexible and powerful user interface. The DSP board provides the image capture, the image display resources and the processing capability necessary to obtain the real time performances. Since both the PC and the DSP are programmable devices, the whole system is very flexible and is particularly suitable for the investigation of vascular mechanics in medical imaging.