Common Shape Model and Inter-individual Variations of the Heart using Medial Representation

A lot of heart diseases result in or from morphologic variations; analysis of shape variability is therefore important for diagnostic classification and understanding of biological processes. The problem of analyzing shapes of complex objects like the heart is widely discussed in the image processing and analysis community, and different approaches have been published. The goal of the work presented here was to investigate the suitability of a medial based approach to fulfill the task of representing and analyzing individual heart shape and inter-individual variations. In a pilot study we analyzed 16 individual human hearts, their common shape, and their main inter-individual variations for a fixed time phase. Electrocardiogram triggered MRIs of 16 subjects were segmented semi-automatically to derive an object ensemble containing the seven major structures: the left and right ventricle, the left and right atria, the pericardium, the radix of the aorta and the pulmonary trunk for each individual heart. These objects were modeled using a medial based representation providing inter-individual shape correspondence via an object intrinsic coordinate system. Based on this concept of correspondence, a common shape model was generated for both the single object and the object ensemble. The inter-individual variations were analyzed using an extended PCA method showing that almost 80% of variations are covered within the first 5 modes. The results give promise that the method will have great value in quantifying inter-individual shape changes both for healthy and for clinically relevant populations, will allow education in anatomy to communicate variabilities, and furthermore may serve as a potential basis for 3 segmentation, classification, and diagnosis. This potential has to be validated with a statistically relevant population in the future.

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