How to better filter echocardiographic image

Hello everyone.

I am trying to segment left atrium of heart in an echocardiographic image using region based segmentation (Chan vese algorithm).

I have filtered the image using a bilateral filter but still within the left atrium, there is some intensity variation because of which segmentation is not working fine. Could you please suggest which filtering approach I can apply to remove such noise? In the attached image, the red curve shows the boundary of left atrium (which should be segmented) and the green color curve represents the intensity variation (noise) which is making noise and I want to remove this.

Thank you!

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I'm sure there are papers that deal with such images here:

http://www.visionbib.com/bibliography/contentsmedical.html#Medical%20Applications,%20CAT,%20MRI,%20Ultrasound,%20Heart%20Models,%20Brain%20Models