A highly accurate method for quantifying LVNC cardiomyophaty

Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) is defined by an increase of trabeculations in left ventricular endo-myocardium. Although LVNC can be in isolation, an increase in hypertrabeculation often accompanies genetic cardiomyopthies. Several enhancements are proposed and implemented to improve a software tool for the automatic quantification of the exact hyper-trabeculation degree in the left ventricular myocardium for a population of patients with LVNC cardiomyopathy (QLVTHC-NC). The software tool is developed and evaluated for a population of 18 patients (133 cardiac images). An end-diastolic cardiac magnetic resonance images of the patients are the input of the software, whereas the left ventricular mass, volumes and proportion of trabeculation produced by the compacted zone and the trabeculated zone are the outputs. Significant improvements are obtained with respect to the manual process, so saving valuable diagnosis time. Comparing the method proposed with the fractal proposal to differentiate LVNC and non-LVNC patients in subjects with previously diagnosed LVNC cardiomyophaty, QLVTHC-NC presents higher diagnostic accuracy and lower complexity and cost than the fractal criterio.