Knowledge directed left ventricular boundary detection in equilibrium radionuclide angiocardiography

A method is presented that will automatically find the left ventricular (LV) boundary in any of several equilibrium radionuclide angiocardiographic (ERNA) image views. The lower level image analysis involves the use of directional gradient edge operators and an edge point linking scheme. The higher level portion of the algorithm uses a knowledge-based strategy that incorporates appropriate local and global information in heuristic cost functions to find complete boundaries. A detailed example of LV boundary delineation in the end diastolic frame from a left lateral view, ERNA image sequence is tracked through each stage of the proposed methodology. The use of this-approach for following the LV boundary through entire temporal sequences is also illustrated on 16 frames of both a left lateral view and a left anterior oblique view ERNA study.