Abstract
ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to propose and verify a universal method of left ventricular myocardium segmentation, able to operate on heart gated PET data with different sizes, shapes and uptake distributions. The proposed method can be classified as active model method and is based on the BEAS (B-spline Explicit Active Surface) algorithm published by Barbosa et al. The method was implemented within the Pmod PCARD software package. Method verification by comparison with reference software and phantom data is also presented in the paper.MethodsThe proposed method extends the BEAS model by defining mechanical features of the model: tensile strength and bending resistance. Formulas describing model internal energy increase during its stretching and bending are proposed. The segmentation model was applied to the data of 60 patients, who had undergone cardiac gated PET scanning. QGS by Cedars-Sinai and ECTb by Emory University Medical Centre served as reference software for comparing ventricular volumes. The method was also verified using data of left ventricular phantoms of known volume.ResultsThe results of the proposed method are well correlated with the results of QGS (slope: 0.841, intercept: 0.944 ml, R2: 0.867) and ECTb (slope: 0.830, intercept: 2.109 ml, R2: 0.845). The volumes calculated by the proposed method were very close to the true cavity volumes of two different phantoms.ConclusionsThe analysis of gated PET data by the proposed method results in volume measurements comparable to established methods. Phantom experiments demonstrate that the volume values correspond to the physical ones.
Highlights
Segmentation is one of the most important steps of image processing in cardiac diagnostics
The aim of this study was to propose a flexible method for human gated PET left ventricular myocardium segmentation, which operates on heart data of different sizes, shapes and uptake distributions
This paper presents the model definition, describes its application to human gated PET data as well as physical phantom data and presents the results of left ventricular volume measurements compared to the ones obtained using the reference software packages: QGS—quantitative gated SPECT [26] and Emory cardiac toolbox Emory Cardiac Toolbox (ECTb) [27]
Summary
Segmentation is one of the most important steps of image processing in cardiac diagnostics. It allows volume calculation [1, 2] and plays an important role when deriving regional time activity curves for signal modeling [3,4,5,6] or for heart muscle strain approximation [7, 8]. The classic formulation of active model segmentation was described by Kass et al [10]. They proposed a model restricted by its stiffness and elasticity, which is deformed in the energy field derived
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