Intracardiac echocardiography: computerized detection of left ventricular borders

A semi-automated method for two- and three-dimensional analysis of intracar diac echocardiography (ICE) images and image sequences is reported based on detection of epicardial and endocardial borders using graph searching. The border detection method was applied to 50 ICE images acquired in vivo in f ive dogs and to 108 images in 16 volumetric ICE image sequences from eight cadaveric pig hearts. The ICE images from the in vivo study showed good cor relation between computer-detected and observer-defined left ventricular (L V) cavity areas and epicardial areas (r = 0.99, y = 0.98x + 0.43 [cm(2)]; r = 0.99, y = 0.98x + 1.11 [cm(2)]; respectively). In the cadaveric hearts, the LV volumes were determined with the volume measurement error of 7.6 +/- 7.7% and 11.3 +/- 11.2% for the aortic valve and mitral valve image sequen ces, respectively. Our method facilitates an accurate and computationally e fficient approach for the quantitative assessment of ICE image data in 2D a nd 3D.