A new method for cardiac computed tomography regional function assessment: stretch quantifier for endocardial...

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Radiology

Background:

• Quantitative assessment of regional myocardial function is crucial for diagnosing cardiac disease.
• Advances in CT imaging allow visualization of fine structures like endocardial trabeculae.
• These structures can serve as fiducial markers for tracking local myocardial deformations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a method for detecting and tracking endocardial features on CT images.
• To extract a quantitative metric reflecting local myocardial contraction.
• To assess the metric's ability to differentiate healthy from infarcted myocardial regions.

Main Methods:

• Developed a method to detect and track endocardial features on CT images.
• Segmented blood and myocardium to calculate trajectories of endocardial features.
• Introduced the 'stretch quantifier of endocardial engraved zones' (SQUEEZ) metric to represent local contraction.
• Acquired first-pass CT and contrast-enhanced CMR images in pigs (8 infarcted, 3 healthy).

Main Results:

• SQUEEZ demonstrated a significant difference between infarct and remote myocardial regions (P<0.0001).
• No significant difference was found between normal myocardium and remote regions (P=0.8).
• The method successfully quantified regional cardiac mechanics.

Conclusions:

• A novel quantitative method for regional cardiac function assessment using high-resolution volumetric CT images is presented.
• This method can be integrated with angiography and myocardial perfusion scans.
• The SQUEEZ metric shows strong correlation with delayed enhancement CMR findings for identifying infarcted and normally contracting regions.