title: Fast automatic myocardial segmentation in 4D cine CMR datasets.
abstract: A novel automatic 3D+time left ventricle (LV) segmentation framework is proposed for cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) datasets. The proposed framework consists of three conceptual blocks to delineate both endo and epicardial contours throughout the cardiac cycle: (1) an automatic 2D mid-ventricular initialization and segmentation; (2) an automatic stack initialization followed by a 3D segmentation at the end-diastolic phase; and (3) a tracking procedure. Hereto, we propose to adapt the recent B-spline Explicit Active Surfaces (BEAS) framework to the properties of CMR images by integrating dedicated energy terms. Moreover, we extend the coupled BEAS formalism towards its application in 3D MR data by adapting it to a cylindrical space suited to deal with the topology of the image data. Furthermore, a fast stack initialization method is presented for efficient initialization and to enforce consistent cylindrical topology. Finally, we make use of an anatomically constrained optical flow method for temporal tracking of the LV surface. The proposed framework has been validated on 45 CMR datasets taken from the 2009 MICCAI LV segmentation challenge. Results show the robustness, efficiency and competitiveness of the proposed method both in terms of accuracy and computational load.
authors.affiliation: Lab on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, KU Leuven, Belgium; ICVS/3B's - PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal. Electronic address: sandroqueiros@ecsaude.uminho.pt.
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Queirós
authors.affiliation: Lab on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, KU Leuven, Belgium; Université de Lyon, CREATIS, CNRS UMR5220, INSERM U630, Université Lyon 1, INSA-Lyon, France; DIGARC - Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA), Barcelos, Portugal. Electronic address: dbarbosa@ipca.pt.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barbosa
authors.affiliation: Lab on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, KU Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Brecht
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Heyde
authors.affiliation: Lab on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, KU Leuven, Belgium; ICVS/3B's - PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Morais
authors.affiliation: ICVS/3B's - PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal; DIGARC - Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA), Barcelos, Portugal.
authors.forename: João L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Vilaça
authors.affiliation: Université de Lyon, CREATIS, CNRS UMR5220, INSERM U630, Université Lyon 1, INSA-Lyon, France.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Friboulet
authors.affiliation: Université de Lyon, CREATIS, CNRS UMR5220, INSERM U630, Université Lyon 1, INSA-Lyon, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bernard
authors.affiliation: Lab on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, KU Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: D'hooge
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006352:Heart Ventricles; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D019028:Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
keywords: Automatic initialization; Cardiac cine MRI; Fast image segmentation; Left ventricle segmentation