title: Model-based processing scheme for quantitative 4-D cardiac MRI analysis.
abstract: In this paper, we present an integrated model-based processing scheme for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), embedded in an interactive computing environment suitable for quantitative cardiac analysis, which provides a set of functions for the extraction, modeling, and visualization of cardiac shape and deformation. The methods apply four-dimensional (4-D) processing (three spatial and one temporal) to multiphase multislice MRI acquisitions and produce a continuous 4-D model of the myocardial surface deformation. The model is used to measure diagnostically useful parameters, such as wall motion, myocardial thicking, and myocardial mass measurements. The proposed model-based shape extraction method has the advantage of integrating local information into an overall representation and produces a robust description of cardiac cavities. A learning segmentation process that incorporates a generating-shrinking neural network is combined with a spatiotemporal parametric modeling method through functional basis decomposition. A multiscale approach is adopted, which uses at each step a coarse-scale model defined at the previous step in order to constrain the boundary detection. The representation accuracy starts from a coarse but smooth estimation of the approximate cardiac shape and is gradually increased to the desired detail. The main advantages of the proposed methods are efficiency, lack of uncertainty about convergence, and robustness to image artifacts. Experimental results obtained from application to clinical multislice multiphase MRI examinations of normal volunteers and patients with medical record of myocardial infarction were satisfactory in terms of accuracy and robustness.
authors.affiliation: Lab of Medical Informatics, The Medical School, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece. stalidis@med.auth.gr
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Stalidis
authors.forename: Nicos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maglaveras
authors.forename: Serafim N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Efstratiadis
authors.forename: Athanasios S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Dimitriadis
authors.forename: Costas
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pappas
mesh_terms: D006321:Heart / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008953:Models, Anatomic