International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol. 11, No. 3, June 2021, pp. 2653~2659 ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v11i3.pp2653-2659  2653 Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com Developing an automatic brachial artery segmentation and bloodstream analysis tool using possibilistic C-means clustering from color Doppler ultrasound images Joonsung Park 1 , Doo Heon Song 2 , Kwang Baek Kim 3 1 Division of Kinesiology, Silla University, Busan, Korea 2 Division of Computer Software Engineering, Silla University, Busan, Korea 3 Department of Computer Games, Yong-In SongDam College, Yong-in, Korea Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jul 31, 2020 Revised Jan 7, 2021 Accepted Jan 16, 2021 Automatic segmentation of brachial artery and blood-flow dynamics are important for early detection of cardiovascular disease and other vascular endothelial malfunctions. In this paper, we propose a software program that is noise tolerant and fully automatic in segmentation of brachial artery from color Doppler ultrasound images. Possibilistic C-Means clustering algorithm is applied to make the automatic segmentation. We use HSV color model to enhance the contrast of bloodstream area in the input image. Our software also provides index of hemoglobin distribution with respect to the blood flow velocity for pathologists to proceed further analysis. In experiment, the proposed method successfully extracts the target area in 59 out of 60 cases (98.3%) with field expert’s verification. Keywords: Automatic segmentation Blood flow dynamics Brachial artery Index of hemoglobin Possibilistic C-means This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Kwang Baek Kim Division of Computer Software Engineering Silla University Busan 46958, Korea Email: gbkim@silla.ac.kr 1. INTRODUCTION The vascular endothelium is a delicate monolayer of cells lining all blood vessels and endothelial dysfunction is associated with numerous cardiovascular diseases [1]. The existing methods for assessing endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis in humans are based on functional tests in the brachial artery. Brachial artery is a medium-sized main arterial supply of the upper limb providing the blood supply to most of its structures [2]. Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is commonly used non-invasive assessment of vascular endothelial function [3]. The brachial artery dilation following a transient period of forearm ischemia is measured to determine the FMD [4]. FMD can measure vascular endothelial function and vasodilation following an acute increase in blood flow (reactive hyperemia), typically induced by a period of circulatory occlusion [5] and it can also be used to measure the blood flow and its velocity [6]. Impaired brachial artery FMD has been reported in several recent studies as a parameter of endothelial dysfunction [1]. Thus, it is regarded as a good blood vessel health predictor of cardiovascular disease [6-9]. Not only for cardiovascular disease patients, is FMD-related blood flow dynamics in brachial artery related with the effect of sports activities in health [10-12]. A recent report also confirmed that the brachial artery diameter and FMD were significantly