An automatic contour detection of left ventricle on cineangiogram and its application to the analysis of cardiac function

In this paper, a computer analysis of cineangiogram useful for measuring left ventricular volume is discussed. We propose an improved algorithm by which the ventricular boundary and aortic valve position are automatically detected. The proposed algorithm takes advantage of the template matching of intensity patterns and the shape matching of point sequences between consecutive fames, based on relaxation labeling method. This algorithm was applied to the single plane and biplane cineangiograms of patients with various heart diseases. The extracted left ventricles were in good agreement with manual tracings made by cardiologists. From the results obtained, the various kinds of cardiac functions, such as volume change, wall motion, pressure-volume relation and so on, can be evaluated. It has been shown that the accuracy of pressure-volume relation obtained from the extracted ventricles is enough to analyse the pump function, contractile state and diastolic properties of the left ventricle. (author)