Title
An atlas-based geometry pipeline for cardiac Hermite model construction and diffusion tensor reorientation.
Abstract
Here we present a novel atlas-based geometry pipeline for constructing three-dimensional cubic Hermite finite element meshes of the whole human heart from tomographic patient image data. To build the cardiac atlas, two superior atria, two inferior ventricles as well as the aorta and the pulmonary trunk are first segmented, and epicardial and endocardial boundary surfaces are extracted and smoothed. Critical points and skeletons (or central-line paths) are identified, following the cardiac topology. The surface model and the path tree are used to construct a hexahedral control mesh via a skeleton-based sweeping method. Derivative parameters are computed from the control mesh, defining cubic Hermite finite elements. The thickness of the atria and the ventricles is obtained using segmented epicardial boundaries or via offsetting from the endocardial surfaces in regions where the image resolution is insufficient. We also develop a robust optical flow approach to deform the constructed atlas and align it with the image from a second patient. This registration method is fully-automatic, and avoids manual operations required by segmentation and path extraction. Moreover, we demonstrate that this method can also be used to deformably map diffusion tensor MRI data with patient geometries to include fiber and sheet orientations in the finite element model.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1016/j.media.2012.06.005
Medical Image Analysis
Keywords
Field
DocType
Atlas,Geometry pipeline,Cubic Hermite finite elements,Human heart,Atrium
Computer vision,Hexahedron,Diffusion MRI,Polygon mesh,Segmentation,Hermite polynomials,Finite element method,Artificial intelligence,Geometry,Image resolution,Optical flow,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
16
6
1361-8415
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
7
0.54
26
Authors
12
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yongjie Zhang129334.45
Xinghua Liang2393.54
Jun Ma33214.39
Yiming Jing4904.96
M J Gonzales58634.12
Christopher T Villongco6211.68
Adarsh Krishnamurthy710712.51
Lawrence R Frank819728.60
Vishal Nigam9201.31
Paul Stark10131.20
Sanjiv M Narayan11214.05
Andrew D. McCulloch1213719.05