SHAPE ANALYSIS FOR AUTOMATIC AND OBJECTIVE VISUALIZATION OF PATHOLOGICAL CARDIOVASCULAR REMODELING FROM CINE CARDIAC MRI

摘要

Weakening of the heart muscle leads to morphological changes such as increased global or regional heart chamber volume, as well as pathological cardiac function such as mechanical dyssynchrony in contraction and relaxation. Early characterization of morphology and function through objective visual medical image quantification can provide spatiotemporal clues to remodeling that may be more tangible than global indices such as LV mass and EF and therefore guide appropriate choice of therapy, viz. pacing based (eg: cardiac resynchronization therapy, CRT) or surgical (eg: surgical ventricular restoration), to restore cardiac geometry and function. The phase-to-phase surface correspondences and regional wall displacement established using the SPHARM technique may be extended in utility through computation of wall velocity between phases and therefore facilitates 4D visual representation of endocardial strain, potentially obviating the requirement of long radiofrequency tagging cardiac MRI sequences to obtain similar results. The presented techniques have general applicability in objective characterization of aneurysms, vascular abnormalities, tumors and other pathological geometries.