Atrial and ventricular myocardium extraction using model-based techniques

This paper presents an efficient approach for extracting myocardial structures from given atrial and ventricular blood masses to enable non-invasive estimation of electrical excitation in human atria and ventricles.

Based on given segmented atrial and ventricular blood masses, the approach constructs the myocardial structure directly, in the case that the myocardium can be detected in the volume data, or by using mean model information, in the case that the myocardium cannot be seen in the volume data due to image modalities or artefacts. The approach employs mathematical and gray-value morphology operations. Regulated by the spatial visibility of the myocardial structure in the medical image data especially the atrial myocardium needs to be estimated repeatedly using the a-priori knowledge given by the anatomy.

The approach was tested using eight patient data sets. The reconstruction process yielded satisfying results with respect to an efficient generation of a volume conductor model which is essential when trying to implement the estimation of electrical excitation in clinical application.

The approach yields ventricular and atrial models that qualify for cardiac source imaging in a clinical setting.