3D MRI heart segmentation of mouse embryos.

MRI has become an effective tool for anatomical mice studies. Currently, embryologists study the development of mouse embryos in order to understand the mechanisms of human development. The aim of the research presented in this paper, is to develop a semi-automatic image segmentation framework based 3D deformable models to identify cardiac malformations which are a major cause of death in children. The segmentation systems have been used to segment 3D mouse embryos heart structures. Results on the ventricles and on the heart muscle are presented and compared with manually segmented models.