Regional analysis of the left ventricle of the heart

This paper presents a method to analyze the local wall motion of the left ventricle of the heart. Data are sets of points (obtained from various medical imaging modalities) corresponding to surfaces of the left ventricle, which evolve as a function of time. After re-sampling, the surfaces are segmented in order to create regions of equivalent volume. Then, the local cardiac parameters are estimated: evolution of the regional volumes as a function of time, ejection fraction, end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes, end-diastolic and end-systolic instants. The method has been validated using deformable surfaces synthesized from an ellipsoidal model. It has also been tested in vivo on a set of 59 patients using a specially developed software product, which satisfies severe constraints of robustness, real-time, interactivity and ergonomics. The results obtained are similar to those provided by a reference nuclear medicine examination, but the proposed method is faster and gives a more precise localization of the cardiac wall motion anomalies. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.