<title>Feasibility of quantitative texture analysis of cardiac magnetic resonance imagery: preliminary results</title>

Abstract

Texture analysis has proven useful in the evaluation of many forms of digital imagery. Our group has shown that texture analysis of echocardiograms may be useful for characterization of myocardial ischemia, contusion, and cardiomyopathies. Recent work in tissue characterization of the brain has used texture analysis of magnetic resonance images to discriminate normal brian tissue from edema and tumor. Magnetic resonance images of the heart have been noted to exhibit visually apparent abnormalities in region image intensity in disease. Based upon these qualitative visual observations, our previous work in cardiac ultrasound texture analysis and the recent application of texture analysis to magnetic resonance brain images, we hypothesized that texture analysis would be useful in evaluating myocardial tissue characteristics from cardiac magnetic resonance images. As a first step towards the goal of cardiac tissue classification, we evaluated the ability of texture analysis to discriminate the left ventricular myocardium from other tissues using magnetic resonance images.