Improved quantification of right ventricular volumes from cardiac magnetic resonance data

Right ventricular (RV) volume quantification from cardiac magnetic resonance imaging is based on manual tracing of endocardial boundaries and application of geometric modeling. This procedure is subjective, time-consuming and may bias volume measurements since the right ventricle is a complex structure that is not well suited to a geometric model. We developed a technique for RV endocardial surface detection and direct volumes and ejection fraction (EF) quantification. Our technique was validated against conventional manual tracing and intra- and inter-observer variability were computed to test its reproducibility. Volumes and EF measurements showed high correlations with no significant biases and narrow limits of agreement compared to values derived from manual tracing. Intra- and inter-observer variability were smaller for the proposed method with respect to the reference technique. Our method resulted in fast, reliable and more reproducible measurements of RV volumes and EF when compared to conventional manual tracing