Automated Volumetric Cardiac Ultrasound Analysis

By Bogdan Georgescu, Ph.D., Siemens

Full volume imaging in echocardiography is one of the emerging imaging modalities increasingly used in clinical practice to assess cardiac function. Volume acquisition methods are continuously improving in terms of spatial and temporal resolution and can provide a more complete representation of the heart for evaluation when compared to conventional two-dimensional echocardiography. Research studies have shown that three-dimensional analysis provides more precise information about the pathophysiology of the heart than conventional analysis of 2D views, and is of particular assistance in volume and ejection fraction analysis.1,2 Despite benefi ts in image quality and clinical information, the interpretation and quantitative analysis of volumetric data is more complex and time consuming than conventional 2D echo. Existing real-time 3D applications require signifi cant processing of the image dataset to visualize the cardiac structures within. Examination of the anatomic structures extracted from the raw ultrasound data requires slicing or cropping of the data to display the cardiac structures of interest. Manual delineation of the anatomies, such as the left ventricle endocardium, is a tedious process requiring border tracing for the entire volume. To help advance the use and benefits of full volume imaging, tools and techniques that can assist in the evaluation of volume data in terms of complexity and time are therefore highly desirable. One such workflow aid would be an automatic detection of the anatomical structures within the volumetric data with guided navigation for fast qualitative and quantitative analysis.