Classification of delayed enhancement scar islands by means of their local subendocardial transmurality

Delayed Enhancement Magnetic Resonance (DE-MR) has clinical relevance in the diagnosis and prognosis of several cardiomyopathies with different etiologies, since they often lead to different scar configurations. However, to the best of our knowledge very little research has been devoted to the computational characterization of the scar islands detected by DE-MR and its location within the myocardial wall. Our purpose is to classify between subendocardial or transmural (S/T) scar islands and mid-wall or subepicardial (M/E) ones by means of their local subendocardial transmurality (LSTM).The results suggest that inspecting local magnitudes such as LSTM within isolated scar islands in DE-MR provides useful information with respect to the diagnosis of different types of cardiomyopathies and might help in the development of computer assisted diagnostic frameworks for nonischemic cardiomyopathies.