Robust and automatic diagnosis of the intraventricular mechanical dyssynchrony for the left ventricle in cardiac magnetic resonance images

Abstract

Purpose Robust and automatic diagnosis of the mechanical dyssynchrony for the left ventricle is essential for the cardiac resynchronization therapy. However, no existing method could meet the desired accuracy yet. In this paper, a new approach is proposed for auto-diagnosis of the intraventricular mechanical dyssynchrony of the left ventricle based on a series of image processing and signal processing techniques. Methods Firstly, the boundary of the left ventricle is identified automatically by the segmentation method. Secondly, the correspondence trajectories are computed based on the tangent field to make sure that they are perpendicular to all the intercepted boundaries. Thirdly, the intercepted points are smoothed by the proposed Fourier shape filter to eliminate noise and increase the diagnosis accuracy. Fourthly, the mechanical dyssynchrony is defined as the lag times between the periodic change of the sampled boundary points and the periodic change of the area of the left ventricle. It is calculated by cross-correlation. Results The segmentation method is trained with 10 cases, the proposed approach is evaluated with other 40 tested cases (20 normal cases and 20 patient cases), and the diagnosis accuracy is 100%. Conclusions Experimental results showed that the proposed approach can accurately diagnose whether the left ventricle has mechanical dyssynchrony or not from the computed lag times. The proposed approach is robust in auto-diagnosis of the mechanical dyssynchrony for the left ventricle in cardiac magnetic resonance images.

Measurement of the Intra-ventricular Mechanical Dyssynchrony in Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Images

“…11 (h) shows the computed mechanical dyssynchrony from four middle slices of the normal control by the proposed approach. Compared to the mechanical dyssynchrony measured by the method proposed in [16], the mechanical dyssynchrony measured by the proposed approach is more accurate.…”

“…Fig. 11 compares the results of computing the mechanical dyssynchrony for the LV of a normal control by the method proposed in [16] and by the approach proposed in this paper. Fig.…”

“…Fig. 11 (a) shows the computed correspondence trajectories and the identified boundaries for one middle slice of the normal control by the method proposed in [16]. Fig.…”

“…Fig. 11 (b) shows the cycles of the filtered distances that are computed from the intersections of the identified boundaries and correspondence Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Systems trajectories by the method proposed in [16]. Fig.…”

“…It has been widely recognized that the mechanical dyssynchorony occurred in the ventricle has become a major predictor for the CRT. To address this critical problem, we have proposed a new approach to measure the mechanical dyssynchorony occurred in the left ventricle [16]. However, the proposed approach could not measure the mechanical dyssynchorony occurred in the right ventricle robustly.…”