In this paper the real time implementation of an automatic contour tracking procedure is presented. If a rough contour of the desired structure is available on the first frame of a sequence, the contours on the subsequent frames are automatically outlined. The mass center of the first order absolute moment operator is used to locate the contour of interest on every frame. The contour tracking procedure was implemented on an integrated software/hardware environment based on the interaction of a PC and a DSP processor (TMS320C80). Standard PAL images at 25 frames/s were used as an input signal; the contour was computed in real time and was then drawn on the images and displayed on a VGA monitor. The results are illustrated both on clinical images recorded on a SVHS videocassette and on images of a test object acquired by means of a video camera.