Combining long and short axis myocardial contours for accurate reconstruction of the left ventricular surface

Abstract

Reconstruction of the left ventricular (LV) surface is required in a number of applications including modeling the LV shape and computing the LV volume. In this work, a new method is presented for accurately reconstructing the LV surface from magnetic resonance images of the heart. The method depends on novel technique for combining the long-axis (LAX) and short-axis (SAX) myocardium contours. A crucial step to achieve this goal is to properly reconstruct the LV surface from the long-axis (LAX) and short-axis (SAX) myocardium contours. This is done using three steps: (1) register the LAX and SAX contours to compensate the patient respiratory motion; (2) non-parametric interpolation of the LV surface at the gaps between SAX slices. To evaluate the proposed methods, out-of-place LAX and SAX myocardial contours was simulated to represent the respiratory motion effect. Then, the LV volume is calculated using the proposed method. The results are compared to the ground truth obtained by the modified Simpson's method. The significance of the methods was proved by calculating its error in calculating the LV volume when only few slices are available, i.e. reduced acquisition. In addition, the method was compared to other available methods using a dataset of 5 patients.