Fast left ventricle tracking using localized anatomical affine optical flow. (11th April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Queirós, Sandro; Vilaça, João L.; Morais, Pedro; Fonseca, Jaime C.; D'hooge, Jan; Barbosa, Daniel
• Is Part Of: International journal for numerical methods in biomedical engineering. Volume 33:Number 11(2017:Nov.)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2017-04-11
• Subjects: 3D echocardiography -- automatic quantification -- cardiac cine MRI -- fast image processing -- left ventricle tracking -- localized affine optical flow; Biomedical engineering -- Periodicals; Imaging systems in medicine -- Periodicals; Numerical analysis -- Periodicals; Engineering mathematics -- Periodicals; 610.28
• DOI: 10.1002/cnm.2871
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-7939

Abstract

Abstract: In daily clinical cardiology practice, left ventricle (LV) global and regional function assessment is crucial for disease diagnosis, therapy selection, and patient follow‐up. Currently, this is still a time‐consuming task, spending valuable human resources. In this work, a novel fast methodology for automatic LV tracking is proposed based on localized anatomically constrained affine optical flow. This novel method can be combined to previously proposed segmentation frameworks or manually delineated surfaces at an initial frame to obtain fully delineated datasets and, thus, assess both global and regional myocardial function. Its feasibility and accuracy were investigated in 3 distinct public databases, namely in realistically simulated 3D ultrasound, clinical 3D echocardiography, and clinical cine cardiac magnetic resonance images. The method showed accurate tracking results in all databases, proving its applicability and accuracy for myocardial function assessment. Moreover, when combined to previous state‐of‐the‐art segmentation frameworks, it outperformed previous tracking strategies in both 3D ultrasound and cardiac magnetic resonance data, automatically computing relevant cardiac indices with smaller biases and narrower limits of agreement compared to reference indices. Simultaneously, the proposed localized tracking method showed to be suitable for online processing, even for 3D motion assessment. Importantly, although here evaluated for LV tracking only, this novel methodology is applicable for tracking of other target structures with minimal adaptations. Abstract : A left ventricle tracking framework is proposed on the basis of a novel fast localized anatomically constrained affine optical flow strategy. Its applicability for global and regional myocardial function assessment in multiple imaging modalities was investigated in 3 distinct public databases, namely in realistically simulated 3D ultrasound, clinical 3D echocardiography, and clinical cine magnetic resonance images. The method showed accurate tracking results in all databases, outperforming previous state‐of‐the‐art strategies with respect to the extracted clinical cardiac indices.