Automatic localization of the left ventricular blood pool centroid in short axis cardiac cine MR images

• Published in: Medical & biological engineering & computing Vol. 56; no. 6; pp. 1053 - 1062
• Main Authors: Tan, Li Kuo, Liew, Yih Miin, Lim, Einly, Abdul Aziz, Yang Faridah, Chee, Kok Han, McLaughlin, Robert A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-06-2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Automation; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Biomedicine; Blood; Centroids; Computer Applications; Contraction; Datasets; Heart; Heart diseases; Human Physiology; Image processing; Image segmentation; Imaging; Localization; Lungs; Original Article; Radiology; Ventricle; Cine MRI; Segmentation; Automatic localization; Left ventricle; Cardiovascular MRI
• ISSN: 0140-0118; 1741-0444
• DOI: 10.1007/s11517-017-1750-7

In this paper, we develop and validate an open source, fully automatic algorithm to localize the left ventricular (LV) blood pool centroid in short axis cardiac cine MR images, enabling follow-on automated LV segmentation algorithms. The algorithm comprises four steps: (i) quantify motion to determine an initial region of interest surrounding the heart, (ii) identify potential 2D objects of interest using an intensity-based segmentation, (iii) assess contraction/expansion, circularity, and proximity to lung tissue to score all objects of interest in terms of their likelihood of constituting part of the LV, and (iv) aggregate the objects into connected groups and construct the final LV blood pool volume and centroid. This algorithm was tested against 1140 datasets from the Kaggle Second Annual Data Science Bowl, as well as 45 datasets from the STACOM 2009 Cardiac MR Left Ventricle Segmentation Challenge. Correct LV localization was confirmed in 97.3% of the datasets. The mean absolute error between the gold standard and localization centroids was 2.8 to 4.7 mm, or 12 to 22% of the average endocardial radius.
Graphical abstract
Fully automated localization of the left ventricular blood pool in short axis cardiac cine MR images.