Automatic extraction of left ventricular contours from MRI images

In the MRI cardiac function analysis, left ventricular volume curves and diagnostic parameters are obtained by extracting the left ventricular cavities as regions of interest (ROI) from the MR cine images. The ROI extractions had to be done by manual operations, so the examination efficiency and data analysis reproducibility were poor in diagnoses on site. In this paper, we outline an automatic extraction method for the left ventricular contours from MR cine images to improve cardiac function diagnosis. With this method, the operator needs to manually indicate only 3 points on the 1st image, and can then get all the contours from the total sequence of images automatically. (author)