Kidney segmentation in ultrasound via genetic initialization and Active Shape Models with rotation correction

In this paper we present a segmentation method for 2D ultrasound images of the pediatric kidney. Our method relies on minimal user intervention and produces accurate segmentations thanks to a combination of improvements made to the Active Shape Model (ASM) framework. The initialization of the ASM module is based on a Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) genetic algorithm that optimizes the pose and the main shape variation modes of the kidney shape model. In order to account for the image formation process in ultrasound, the appearance model is obtained not according to the anatomically corresponding contour landmarks, but to those that exhibit a similar angle of incidence with respect to the wavefront traveling from the probe. The results indicate a median Dice's coefficient of 90.2% and a relative area difference of 10.8% for segmentation of a set of 80 kidney images.