SIMULTANEOUS AND CORRELATED DETECTION OF ENDOCARDIAL AND EPICARDIAL BORDERS ON SHORT-AXIS MR-IMAGES FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF LEFT-VENTRICULARMASS

A method was developed for fast, reproducible assessment of left ventr icular mass with detection of the endocardial and epicardial borders, The method makes use of short-axis magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in conjunction with an integrated segmentation approach that includes reg ion growing, edge detection, and adaptive thresholding. The mass of th e left ventricle in nine Yucatan minipigs was measured ex vivo and com pared with the mass as determined in vivo with both fully automated se gmentation and an interactive process involving two trained observers, The test sample consisted of 59 sections obtained during diastole, Th ere was good correlation between actual mass and both automatically an d manually assessed mass, Linear regression analysis showed that the d ifference between ex vivo measurement and automatic mass assessment (s tandard error of estimation [SEE] = 5 g) was similar to interobserver variability in interactive mass assessment (SEE = 4 g), Mass assessmen t with short-axis MR imaging and an integrated segmentation approach d oes not require location of the ventricular cavity and allows precise delineation of the endocardial and epicardial borders. The results of this experimental study are encouraging for the potential use of this technique in clinical cardiac functional analyses.