The segmentation of the left ventricle (LV) is an im- portant task to assess the cardiac function in ultrasound images of the heart. This paper presents a novel methodology for the segmentation of the LV in three-dimensional (3-D) echocardio- graphic images based on the probabilistic data association filter (PDAF). The proposed methodology begins by initializing a 3-D deformable model either semiautomatically, with user input, or automatically, and it comprises the following feature hierarchical approach: 1) edge detection in the vicinity of the surface (low- level features); 2) edge grouping to obtain potential LV surface patches (mid-level features); and 3) patch filtering using a shape- PDAF framework (high-level features). This method provides good performance accuracy in 20 echocardiographic volumes, and com- pares favorably with the state-of-the-art segmentation methodolo- gies proposed in the recent literature.