Motivation

Our heart and vascular anatomy changes its size and shape in health and disease. An athlete’s heart thickens its myocardial walls in order to meet the high demands in physical exercise. And heart failure patients usually display a dilated heart with thin walls. Cardiac remodelling, a change of size or shape, is thus a useful biomarker to identify and stratify patients, to evaluate the impact of a therapy, or to assess the quality and of a surgical reconstruction. Despite the rich anatomical detail present in clinical images, clinicians only use bulk metrics like volume, length or thickness.

Our approach

CMIB develops and apply the technology of statistical shape modelling in order to harness all the information available in medical images. As a result, computational atlases of human anatomy provide a thorough description of how the 3D shape of an organ remodels with a given change of physiological conditions, or the appearance of a disease process. Cardiologist can then unveil new cardiac remodelling patterns, understand better the impact of therapies and the evolution of disease, and relate them to functional and clinical outcome metrics.

Technologies

• Automatic image segmentation
• Model personalization
• Statistical computational models

Further reading

• Novel computational analysis of left atrial anatomy improves prediction of atrial fibrillation recurrence after ablation
• An automatic service for the personalization of ventricular cardiac meshes
• Preterm Heart in Adult Life: Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Reveals Distinct Differences in Left Ventricular Mass, Geometry, and Function
• Revealing Differences in Anatomical Remodelling of the Systemic Right Ventricle