Automatic, Simultaneous, Non-invasive Measurements of Flow and Area in the Human Pulmonary Arteries from MRI Images

Abstract

Pulmonary hypertension (PH), a disease with a high mortality rate, is currently diagnosed by invasive right heart catheterization (RHC). Quantification of wave reflections can offer information about the status of the pulmonary circulation in health and disease, and can be achieved by simultaneous measurement of flow and pressure at the same anatomical site. In practice such measurements are obtained using different acquisition techniques which needs to be synchronized in order to satisfy the simultaneity criterion. We hypothesis that combining the advantages of mathematical modelling with non-invasive Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements of flow and anatomy could offer totally non-invasive modalities for characterizing PH. Our preliminary work was focused on the development of automatic tools to determine accurately flow Q(t) and area A(t) measurements directly from MRI DICOM images, ultimately to support a novel characterisation protocol although the latter is beyond the scope of this paper.