Analysis of Regional Deformation of the Heart Left Ventricle

Context: Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death affecting the adult population. It involves disorders of myocardial perfusion which can lead to the disturbance in myocardial function and/or myocardial infarction. Finding an efficient method for the deformation analysis in the left ventricle of the heart (LV) is one of the major concerns in cardiac imaging. Objective: In literature, most models provide global representation of the LV surface, that cannot specify the affected area. The present work is aimed at quantifying the local deformations in the LV by developing accurate computational approaches in order to refine the diagnosis and specify the ischemic territory. Method: The proposed approach advocates the application of three different methods: (1) the numerical quantification of regional deformation based on SPHARM shape descriptors, (2) volume evolution, and (3) the Hotelling metric computation by use of the relative curvature at the vertices of the triangulation. In order to progress to a regional analysis, we carried out a division into 17 regions according to the AHA standard of LV object. It is worth noting that our two first methods are based on the application of the cloud closing process by generating new points on the cutting planes. Results: The different approaches were tested on 44 patients. The obtained results show its effectiveness and validity by giving the degree and the location of the pathological deformation in the LV. We compared the obtained results with diagnostic offered by qualified nuclear medicine physicians. Also, we compared the obtained results of each methods in order to define the more robust approach. (C) 2017 AGBM. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.