Automated quantitative assessment of cardiovascular magnetic resonance-derived atrioventricular junction velocities.

The assessment of atrioventricular junction (AVJ) deformation plays an important role in evaluating left ventricular systolic and diastolic function in clinical practice. This study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness and consistency of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) for quantitative assessment of AVJ velocity compared with tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE). A group of 145 human subjects comprising 21 healthy volunteers, 8 patients with heart failure, 17 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, 52 patients with myocardial infarction, and 47 patients with repaired Tetralogy of Fallot were prospectively enrolled and underwent TDE and CMR scan. Six AVJ points were tracked with three CMR views. The peak systolic velocity (Sm1), diastolic velocity during early diastolic filling (Em), and late diastolic velocity during atrial contraction (Am) were extracted and analyzed. All CMR-derived septal and lateral AVJ velocities correlated well with TDE measurements (Sm1: r = 0.736; Em: r = 0.835; Am: r = 0.701; Em/Am: r = 0.691; all p < 0.001) and demonstrated excellent reproducibility [intrastudy: r = 0.921-0.991, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC): 0.918-0.991; interstudy: r = 0.900-0.970, ICC: 0.887-0.957; all p < 0.001]. The evaluation of three-dimensional AVJ motion incorporating measurements from all views better differentiated normal and diseased states [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.918] and provided further insights into mechanical dyssynchrony diagnosis in HF patients (AUC = 0.987). These findings suggest that the CMR-based method is feasible, accurate, and consistent in quantifying the AVJ deformation, and subsequently in diagnosing systolic and diastolic cardiac dysfunction.

Graph-cuts based reconstructing patient specific right ventricle: first human study.

Right ventricular (RV) function is increasingly recognized to play an important role in the clinical status and long-term outcome in patients with congenital heart disease as well as ischemic cardiomyopathy with left ventricular dysfunction. However, quantification of RV characteristics and function are still challenging due to its complex morphology and its thin wall with coarse trabeculations. To assess RV functions quantitatively, establishing the patient-specific model from medical images is a prerequisite task. This study aims to develop a novel method for RV model reconstruction. Magnetic resonance images were acquired and preprocessed. Contours of right ventricle, right atrium and pulmonary artery were manually delineated at all slices and all time frames. The contour coordinates as well as the medical image specifications such as image pixel resolution and slick thickness were exported. The contours were transformed to the correct positions. Reorientation and matching were executed in between neighboring contours; extrapolation and interpolation were conducted upon all contours. After preprocessing, the more dense point set was reconstructed through a variational tool. A Delaunay-based tetrahedral mesh was generated on the region of interest. The weighted minimal surface model was used to describe RV surface. The graphcuts technique, i.e., max-flow/min-cut algorithm, was applied to minimize the energy defined by the model. The reconstructed surface was extracted from the mesh according to the mincut. Smoothing and remeshing were performed. The CPU time to reconstruct the model for one frame was approximately 2 minutes. In 10 consecutive subjects referred for cardiac MRI (80% female), right ventricular volumes were measured using our method against the commercial available CMRtools package. The results demonstrated that there was a significant correlation in end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes between our method and commercial software (r= 0.89 for end-diastolic volume and r=0.79 for end-systolic volume, both P<;0.0001). The time to obtain right ventricular volumes was shorter using our method than commercial one. In conclusion, a new method for right ventricle reconstruction has been developed. We envisage that this automatic modeling tool could be used by radiographer and cardiologists to assess the RV function in diverse heart diseases.

Characterization and quantification of curvature using independent coordinates method in the human left ventricle by magnetic resonance imaging to identify the morphology subtype of hypertrophy cardiomyopathy.

The patterns of ventricular hypertrophy are critical determinants of blood flow and function, but are variable. Therefore, it is clinically relevant to assess the hypertrophic shape patterns to better characterize and identify the morphological subtypes. We proposed and developed an independent coordinates method (ICM) to quantify the regional shape of the left ventricle in terms of curvature. 19 normal subjects and 5 HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) patients with different morphological subtype (i.e., septal hypertrophy, mid-ventricular hypertrophy, reverse curvature septum hypertrophy and sigmoid septum hypertrophy) were recruited and underwent magnetic resonance scans. The curvature along the endocardial and epicardial surface was computed using ICM method and was compared in HCM patients against normal subjects. The results showed that curvature plots are variable in different morphological subtype. The curvature pattern demonstrated the utilities in delineating different subtype. In conclusion, ICM method to quantify regional curvature of the left ventricle from magnetic resonance imaging are feasible in normal subjects and those with hypertrophy cardiomyopathy, which may serve as a novel approach to depict local shape of the left ventricle and to assess the morphological subtype in clinical practice.