Segmentation and visualization of left ventricle in MR cardiac images

The paper presents a segmentation algorithm to extract the endocardial and epicardial walls of the left ventricle in MR cardiac images. The algorithm is based on a generalized gradient vector flow (GGVF) snake and a prediction of initial contour (PIC). Especially, the proposed algorithm uses physical characteristics of endocardial and epicardial contours, cross profile correlation matching (CPCM), and a mixed interpolation model. The proposed method is applied to short axis MR cardiac image sets, which are obtained by Siemens, Medinus, and GE MRI systems. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can extract acceptable epicardial and endocardial walls. In addition, we calculate quantitative parameters from the segmented results, which are displayed graphically. The segmented left ventricle is visualized volumetrically by surface rendering. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the Windows environment using Visual C++.