Segmentation Of Heart Chambers Research Articles

Implementation of Anatomy Constrained Contrastive Learning for Heart Chamber Segmentation

The article covers the implementation of anatomy constrained contrastive (ACC) learning networks on a dataset of echocardiographic images with the purpose of segmenting heart chambers for further study. The dataset was partially synthetic, generated using slicing of 3D models of the heart. The images were generated using cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CycleGAN) and contrastive unpaired translation (CUT) approaches. By utilizing both CycleGAN and CUT approaches, the generated images captured a wide range of variations in heart chamber segmentation, allowing for a more comprehensive study of the different anatomical features. Proposed approach augments the implementation of ACC learning networks and partially solves the data scarcity problem when it comes to segmentation implementation.

Heart Chamber Segmentation in Cardiomegaly Conditions Using the CNN Method with U-Net Architecture

Cardiomegaly is a disease in which sufferers show no symptoms and have symptoms such as shortness of breath, abnormal heartbeat and edema. Cardiomegaly will cause the sufferer's heart to pump harder than usual. Early diagnosis of cardiomegaly can help make decisions about whether the heart is abnormal or normal. In addition, due to the problem that manual examination takes time and requires human interpretation and experience, tools are needed to automatically develop and identify normal and abnormal hearts. Therefore, this study proposes cardiac chamber segmentation using 2D (two-dimensional) ultrasound convolutional neural networks for rapid cardiomegaly screening in clinical applications based on heart ultrasound examination. The proposed approach uses a CNN with a U-Net architecture model with abnormal and normal heart data. The research results obtained used the pixel matrix evaluation Avg_accuracy of 99.50%, Val_accuracy of 97.98% and Mean_IoU of 90.01%.

TC-SegNet: robust deep learning network for fully automatic two-chamber segmentation of two-dimensional echocardiography.

Heart chamber quantification is an essential clinical task to analyze heart abnormalities by evaluating the heart volume estimated through the endocardial border of the chambers. A precise heart chamber segmentation algorithm using echocardiography is essential for improving the diagnosis of cardiac disease. This paper proposes a robust two chamber segmentation network (TC-SegNet) for echocardiography which follows a U-Net architecture and effectively incorporates the proposed modified skip connection, Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) modules and squeeze and excitation modules. The TC-SegNet is evaluated on the open-source fully annotated dataset of cardiac acquisitions for multi-structure ultrasound segmentation (CAMUS). The proposed TC-SegNet obtained an average value of F1-score of 0.91, an average Dice score of 0.9284 and an IoU score of 0.8322 which are higher than the reference models used here for comparison. Further, Pixel error (PE) of 1.5109 which are significantly less than the comparison models. The segmentation results and metrics show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art segmentation methods.

Tunicate swarm-based grey wolf algorithm for fetal heart chamber segmentation and classification: a heuristic-based optimal feature selection concept

Ultrasound image quality management and assessment are an important stage in clinical diagnosis. This operation is often carried out manually, which has several issues, including reliance on the operator’s experience, lengthy labor, and considerable intra-observer variance. As a result, automatic quality evaluation of Ultrasound images is particularly desirable in medical applications. This research work plans to perform the fetal heart chamber segmentation and classification using the novel intelligent technology named as hybrid optimization algorithm Tunicate Swarm-based Grey Wolf Algorithm (TS-GWA). Initially, the US fetal images data is collected and data undergoes the preprocessing using the total variation technique. From the preprocessed images, the optimal features are extracted using the TF-IDF approach. Then, Segmentation is processed on optimally selected features using Spatially Regularized Discriminative Correlation Filters (SRDCF) method. In the final step, the classification of fetal images is done using the Modified Long Short-Term Memory (MLSTM) Network. The fitness function behind the optimal feature selection as well as the hidden neuron optimization of MLSTM is the maximization of PSNR and minimization of MSE. The PSNR value is improved from 3.1 to 9.8 in the proposed method and accuracy of the proposed classification algorithm is improved from 1.9 to 12.13 compared to other existing techniques. The generalization ability and the adaptability of proposed TS-GWA method are described by conducting the various performance analysis. Extensive performance result shows that proposed intelligent techniques performs better than the existing segmentation methods.

Systematic Analysis of CMR Segmentation Using Deep Learning

This review provides an overview of cardiac segmentation by using Deep learning for MR images. Cardiac MR is widely used due to its unique capability as non invasive imaging. CMR images are used to derive cardiac indices to diagnose various cardiac diseases by segmentation of heart chambers. There are number of challenges in automatic cardiac MR segmentation due to characteristics of MR images because of continuous movement of heart. Now days, deep learning become widely used technique to segment heart chambers for efficient and accurate results. In this review, we provide overview of publically available CMRI datasets, descriptions of currently available methods to segment Left ventricle, Right ventricle, and Myocardium. After reviewing various techniques, we describe limitations and possible solutions. We conclude deep learning based segmentation issues in the currentapproaches.

Artificial Intelligence Models for Heart Chambers Segmentation from 2D Echocardiographic Images: A Scoping Review.

Echocardiography (echo) is a non-invasive, safe, widely available imaging modality that is frequently used to assess the heart structure and function. Accurate heart chamber segmentation is an essential step to quantify certain parameters, including heart chamber volumes. In clinical practice, this task is manually done by echo experts, where it consumes considerable time and is subjective to both errors as well as intra-operator variability. Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been used to automatically segment heart chambers. We conducted a scoping review to provide an overview of the AI models used for this task. Three bibliographic databases; PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar were explored. Out of 640 initially retrieved studies, 36 studies were included. Multiple AI models used for echo images segmentation were identified, which can be broadly categorized into five methods: low-level image processing, deformable-based, statistical techniques, machine learning (ML), and deep learning-based (DL) techniques. The initial three categories were relatively simple and required less computational complexity compared to the ML and DL models. The convolutional neural network was the most widely used DL-based technique in most-recent publications. Generalizability of the models is a major concern that needs to be addressed in the future. Well-annotated larger 2D echo image datasets would be required to mitigate the challenges to some extent.

Overview of the Whole Heart and Heart Chamber Segmentation Methods.

Preservation and improvement of heart and vessel health is the primary motivation behind cardiovascular disease (CVD) research. Development of advanced imaging techniques can improve our understanding of disease physiology and serve as a monitor for disease progression. Various image processing approaches have been proposed to extract parameters of cardiac shape and function from different cardiac imaging modalities with an overall intention of providing full cardiac analysis. Due to differences in image modalities, the selection of an appropriate segmentation algorithm may be a challenging task. This paper presents a comprehensive and critical overview of research on the whole heart, bi-ventricles and left atrium segmentation methods from computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MRI) and echocardiography (echo) imaging. The paper aims to: (1) summarize the considerable challenges of cardiac image segmentation, (2) provide the comparison of the segmentation methods, (3) classify significant contributions in the field and (4) critically review approaches in terms of their performance and accuracy. The methods described are classified based on the used segmentation approach into (1) edge-based segmentation methods, (2) model-fitting segmentation methods and (3) machine and deep learning segmentation methods and are further split based on the targeted cardiac structure. Edge-based methods are mostly developed as semi-automatic and allow end-user interaction, which provides physicians with extra control over the final segmentation. Model-fitting methods are very robust and resistant to the high variability in image contrast and overall image quality. Nevertheless, they are often time-consuming and require appropriate models with prior knowledge. While the emerging deep learning segmentation approaches provide unprecedented performance in some specific scenarios and under the appropriate training, their performance highly depends on the data quality and the amount and the accuracy of provided annotations.

Heart Chamber Segmentation from CT Using Convolutional Neural Networks.

CT is routinely used for radiotherapy planning with organs and regions of interest being segmented for diagnostic evaluation and parameter optimization. For cardiac segmentation, many methods have been proposed for left ventricular segmentation, but few for simultaneous segmentation of the entire heart. In this work, we present a convolutional neural networks (CNN)-based cardiac chamber segmentation method for 3D CT with 5 classes: left ventricle, right ventricle, left atrium, right atrium, and background. We achieved an overall accuracy of 87.2% ± 3.3% and an overall chamber accuracy of 85.6 ± 6.1%. The deep learning based segmentation method may provide an automatic tool for cardiac segmentation on CT images.

A review of heart chamber segmentation for structural and functional analysis using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has become a key imaging modality in clinical cardiology practice due to its unique capabilities for non-invasive imaging of the cardiac chambers and great vessels. A wide range of CMR sequences have been developed to assess various aspects of cardiac structure and function, and significant advances have also been made in terms of imaging quality and acquisition times. A lot of research has been dedicated to the development of global and regional quantitative CMR indices that help the distinction between health and pathology. The goal of this review paper is to discuss the structural and functional CMR indices that have been proposed thus far for clinical assessment of the cardiac chambers. We include indices definitions, the requirements for the calculations, exemplar applications in cardiovascular diseases, and the corresponding normal ranges. Furthermore, we review the most recent state-of-the art techniques for the automatic segmentation of the cardiac boundaries, which are necessary for the calculation of the CMR indices. Finally, we provide a detailed discussion of the existing literature and of the future challenges that need to be addressed to enable a more robust and comprehensive assessment of the cardiac chambers in clinical practice.

Segmentation of left ventricle in short-axis echocardiographic sequences by weighted radial edge filtering and adaptive recovery of dropout regions

In this paper, we present a weighted radial edge filtering algorithm with adaptive recovery of dropout regions for the semi-automatic delineation of endocardial contours in short-axis echocardiographic image sequences. The proposed algorithm requires minimal user intervention at the end diastolic frame of the image sequence for specifying the candidate points of the contour. The region of interest is identified by fitting an ellipse in the region defined by the specified points. Subsequently, the ellipse centre is used for originating the radial lines for filtering. A weighted radial edge filter is employed for the detection of edge points. The outliers are corrected by global as well as local statistics. Dropout regions are recovered by incorporating the important temporal information from the previous frame by means of recursive least squares adaptive filter. This ensures fairly accurate segmentation of the cardiac structures for further determination of the functional cardiac parameters. The proposed algorithm was applied to 10 data-sets over a full cardiac cycle and the results were validated by comparing computer-generated boundaries to those manually outlined by two experts using Hausdorff distance (HD) measure, radial mean square error (rmse) and contour similarity index. The rmse was 1.83 mm with a HD of 5.12 ± 1.21 mm. We have also compared our results with two existing approaches, level set and optical flow. The results indicate an improvement when compared with ground truth due to incorporation of temporal clues. The weighted radial edge filtering algorithm in conjunction with adaptive dropout recovery offers semi-automatic segmentation of heart chambers in 2D echocardiography sequences for accurate assessment of global left ventricular function to guide therapy and staging of the cardiovascular diseases.

Four-Chamber Heart Modeling and Automatic Segmentation for 3-D Cardiac CT Volumes Using Marginal Space Learning and Steerable Features

We propose an automatic four-chamber heart segmentation system for the quantitative functional analysis of the heart from cardiac computed tomography (CT) volumes. Two topics are discussed: heart modeling and automatic model fitting to an unseen volume. Heart modeling is a nontrivial task since the heart is a complex nonrigid organ. The model must be anatomically accurate, allow manual editing, and provide sufficient information to guide automatic detection and segmentation. Unlike previous work, we explicitly represent important landmarks (such as the valves and the ventricular septum cusps) among the control points of the model. The control points can be detected reliably to guide the automatic model fitting process. Using this model, we develop an efficient and robust approach for automatic heart chamber segmentation in 3-D CT volumes. We formulate the segmentation as a two-step learning problem: anatomical structure localization and boundary delineation. In both steps, we exploit the recent advances in learning discriminative models. A novel algorithm, marginal space learning (MSL), is introduced to solve the 9-D similarity transformation search problem for localizing the heart chambers. After determining the pose of the heart chambers, we estimate the 3-D shape through learning-based boundary delineation. The proposed method has been extensively tested on the largest dataset (with 323 volumes from 137 patients) ever reported in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, our system is the fastest with a speed of 4.0 s per volume (on a dual-core 3.2-GHz processor) for the automatic segmentation of all four chambers.