Towards High-Resolution Cardiac Atlases: Ventricular Anatomy Descriptors for a Standardized Reference Frame

Increased resolution in cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and growing interest in the effect of small structures in electrophysiology of the heart pose new challenges for cardiac atlases. In this paper we discuss the limitations of current atlas-building models when trying to incorporate cardiac small structure and argue for the need of developing a standard coordinate system for the heart that separates this from the macro-structure common to all individual hearts, in a way analogous to the stereotactic coordinate system from brain atlases. With this goal, we propose a set of methods to obtain two descriptors of the ventricular macro-structure that can be used to build a standardized reference frame: the central curve on the Left Ventricle cavity and the smoothed internal envelope of the Right Ventricle crest (i.e. the curve in the endocardial surface marking the junction between the right ventricular free wall and the septum).

[1]  Alejandro F Frangi,et al.  Computational cardiac atlases: from patient to population and back , 2009, Experimental physiology.

[2]  David Gavaghan,et al.  Generation of histo-anatomically representative models of the individual heart: tools and application , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[3]  M. Cerqueira,et al.  Standardized myocardial segmentation and nomenclature for tomographic imaging of the heart. A statement for healthcare professionals from the Cardiac Imaging Committee of the Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association. , 2002, Circulation.

[4]  Alejandro F. Frangi,et al.  Automatic construction of multiple-object three-dimensional statistical shape models: application to cardiac modeling , 2002, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[5]  Daniel Rueckert,et al.  Atlas-Based Segmentation and Tracking of 3D Cardiac MR Images Using Non-rigid Registration , 2002, MICCAI.

[6]  D. Louis Collins,et al.  Application of Information Technology: A Four-Dimensional Probabilistic Atlas of the Human Brain , 2001, J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc..

[7]  David Gavaghan,et al.  Three‐Dimensional Models of Individual Cardiac Histoanatomy: Tools and Challenges , 2006, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[8]  Timothy F. Cootes,et al.  Training Models of Shape from Sets of Examples , 1992, BMVC.

[9]  Paul J. Cassidy,et al.  Long-term stability of cardiac function in normal and chronically failing mouse hearts in a vertical-bore MR system , 2004, Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine.

[10]  Vicente Grau,et al.  Cardiac valve annulus manual segmentation using computer assisted visual feedback in three-dimensional image data , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[11]  R. Menzel,et al.  Three‐dimensional average‐shape atlas of the honeybee brain and its applications , 2005, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[12]  B. Rodriguez,et al.  Integrated approach for the study of anatomical variability in the cardiac Purkinje system: From high resolution MRI to electrophysiology simulation , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[13]  Denis Noble,et al.  Dimensionality in cardiac modelling. , 2005, Progress in biophysics and molecular biology.

[14]  Alejandro F. Frangi,et al.  Effects of the Purkinje System and Cardiac Geometry on Biventricular Pacing: A Model Study , 2010, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[15]  M. Cerqueira,et al.  Standardized myocardial segmentation and nomenclature for tomographic imaging of the heart: A statement for healthcare professionals from the Cardiac Imaging Committee of the Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association , 2002, The international journal of cardiovascular imaging.

[16]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[17]  Gernot Plank,et al.  Development of an anatomically detailed MRI-derived rabbit ventricular model and assessment of its impact on simulations of electrophysiological function , 2009, American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology.

[18]  Boudewijn P. F. Lelieveldt,et al.  Anatomical model matching with fuzzy implicit surfaces for segmentation of thoracic volume scans , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[19]  Fred L. Bookstein,et al.  Principal Warps: Thin-Plate Splines and the Decomposition of Deformations , 1989, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[20]  Ramón Casero Cañas,et al.  Left ventricle functional analysis in 2D+t contrast echocardiography within an atlas−based deformable template model framework , 2008 .

[21]  I. Legrice,et al.  The architecture of the heart: a data–based model , 2001, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[22]  C. Taylor,et al.  Active shape models - 'Smart Snakes'. , 1992 .