Three-dimensional modeling for functional analysis of cardiac images: A review

Three-dimensional (3-D) imaging of the heart is a rapidly del eloping area of research in medical imaging, Advances in hardware and methods for fast s patio-temporal cardiac imaging are extending the frontiers of clinical diag nosis and research on cardiovascular diseases. In the last few Sears, many approaches hare been proposed to analyze images and extract parameters of cardiac shape and function from a variety of car diac imaging modalities. In particular, techniques based on spatio-temporal geometric models have received considerable attention. This paper surveys the literature of tno decades of research on cardiac modeling. The contribu tion of the paper is three-fold: 1) to serve as a tutorial of the field for both clinicians and technologists, 2) to provide an extensive account of m odeling techniques in a comprehensive and systematic manner, and 3) to crit ically review these approaches in terms of their performance and degree of clinical evaluation with respect to the final goal of cardiac functional an alysis, From this review it is concluded that whereas 3-D model-based appro aches have the capability. to improve the diagnostic value of cardiac image s, issues as robustness, 3-D interaction, computational complexity and clin ical validation still require significant attention.