Fully Automated Identification and Segmentation of the LV and RV: Validation with a Large Clinical Trial

Abstract

Segmentation of the left (LV) and right (RV) ventricles is required for clinical and research studies of cardiac function. Manual analysis by experts is time consuming and also susceptible to intra- and inter-observer variability. Automated segmentation of the LV and RV from SSFP images would remove these problems and allow powerful image segmentation algorithms to process the data prior to presentation to the clinician. Present segmentation techniques for cardiac MR images typically require user interaction or do not cater well for the RV.