Patent ID: 8435181

Claim:
A method for ultrasonic imaging of a region-of-interest within a subject, comprising the steps of: exposing the region-of-interest to ultrasound energy generated by an ultrasonic transceiver emitting an ultrasound frequency acoustically coupled to and placed against a surface location of the subject; collecting ultrasound echoes with the ultrasonic transceiver from tissue at least partially surrounding a cavity in the region-of-interest; generating a first set of tissue pixel candidate points occupying regions near a cavity-tissue interface; generating successive sets of tissue pixel candidate points by: (a) determining a next subsequent set of tissue pixel candidate points based upon extracting positional information from a cost function analysis of the first set, (b)identifying said next subsequent set as a previous subsequent set, (c) determining a next subsequent set of tissue pixel candidate points based upon extracting positional information from a cost function analysis of the previous subsequent set, and (d) repeating steps (b)-(c) in an iterative manner until the occurrence of a predetermined condition; and determining a boundary contour between the cavity-tissue interface based upon the successive sets of tissue pixel candidate points.