Towards automated evaluation of left atrial transit time

Background Left atrial transit time (LATT) has potential to approximate left ventricular end diastolic pressure noninvasively. Small artifacts are often present in the down-slope portion of the time-intensity curve most likely due to poor SNR resulting from relatively low contrast dosing. While easily circumvented by experienced operator the artifact presents ac hallenge to automated detection of area under the curve (AUC) which is essential in the determination of LATT. To minimize user interface we sought to develop a filtering algorithm in the post processing and compared automated AUC detection with operator directed AUC assessment.