A method includes constructing a variation image from an ovarian follicle B-mode ultrasound image, wherein the variation image is indicative of local variations in the ovarian follicle B-mode ultrasound image, constructing a binary image from the variation image and the ovarian follicle B-mode image, identifying connected components in the binary image, wherein each connected component corresponds to a different ovarian follicle candidate, constructing a coarse follicle mask from the binary image where each identified connected component represents a mask for a corresponding different ovarian follicle candidate in the binary image, optimizing contours of the follicles in the coarse follicle mask, and segmenting one or more ovarian follicles from the ovarian follicle B-mode ultrasound image with the optimized follicle mask.
