A user interactive method for measuring lateral ventricle width in neonates

Abstract

Ventriculomegaly is one of the most sensitive markers for abnormal development of the fetal central nervous system. So assessment of the size of lateral ventricles has become an important part of routine neurological assessment in neonates. We have proposed a method for measuring the width of lateral ventricles in term and preterm neonates from the coronal view of their brain ultrasound images. Based on the ultrasound image, the following steps are performed. 1) Ultrasound image is preprocessed to reduce the speckle noise. 2) The region of interest is extracted from the original image. 3) The image containing lateral ventricles and cavum septum pellucidum (CSP) is segmented. 4) Lateral ventricles and CSP are labeled. 5) Morphological operations are done to smooth the boundaries of lateral ventricles and to fill the cavities. 6) Lateral ventricle width is measured by means of the proposed image processing method.