Pericardial fat volume (PFV) is emerging as an important parameter for cardiovascular risk stratification. We propose a hybrid approach for automated PFV quantification from water/fat-resolved whole-heart noncontrast coronary magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Ten coronary MRA datasets were acquired. Image reconstruction and phase-based water-fat separation were conducted offline. Our proposed algorithm first roughly segments the heart region on the original image using a simplified atlas-based segmentation with four cases in the atlas. To get exact boundaries of pericardial fat, a three-dimensional graph-based segmentation is used to generate fat and nonfat components on the fat-only image. The algorithm then selects the components that represent pericardial fat. We validated the quantification results on the remaining six subjects and compared them with manual quantifications by an expert reader. The PFV quantified by our algorithm was 62.78±27.85 cm3, compared to 58.66±27.05 cm3 by the expert reader, which were not significantly different (p=0.47) and showed excellent correlation (R=0.89,p<0.01). The mean absolute difference in PFV between the algorithm and the expert reader was 9.9±8.2 cm3. The mean value of the paired differences was −4.13 cm3 (95% confidence interval: −14.47 to 6.21). The mean Dice coefficient of pericardial fat voxels was 0.82±0.06. Our approach may potentially be applied in a clinical setting, allowing for accurate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based PFV quantification without tedious manual tracing.
Non-contrast cardiac CT is used worldwide to assess coronary artery calcium (CAC), a subclinical marker of coronary atherosclerosis. Manual quantification of regional CAC scores includes identifying candidate regions, followed by thresholding and connected component labeling. We aimed to develop and validate a fully-automated, algorithm for both overall and regional measurement of CAC scores from non-contrast CT using a hybrid multi-atlas registration, active contours and knowledge-based region separation algorithm. A co-registered segmented CT atlas was created from manually segmented non-contrast CT data from 10 patients (5 men, 5 women) and stored offline. For each patient scan, the heart region, left ventricle, right ventricle, ascending aorta and aortic root are located by multi-atlas registration followed by active contours refinement. Regional coronary artery territories (left anterior descending artery, left circumflex artery and right coronary artery) are separated using a knowledge-based region separation algorithm. Calcifications from these coronary artery territories are detected by region growing at each lesion. Global and regional Agatston scores and volume scores were calculated in 50 patients. Agatston scores and volume scores calculated by the algorithm and the expert showed excellent correlation (Agatston score: r = 0.97, p < 0.0001, volume score: r = 0.97, p < 0.0001) with no significant differences by comparison of individual data points (Agatston score: p = 0.30, volume score: p = 0.33). The total time was <60 sec on a standard computer. Our results show that fast accurate and automated quantification of CAC scores from non-contrast CT is feasible.
Epicardial fat volume (EFV) is now regarded as a significant imaging biomarker for cardiovascular risk strat-ification. Manual or semi-automated quantification of EFV includes tedious and careful contour drawing of pericardium on fine image features. We aimed to develop and validate a fully-automated, accurate algorithm for EVF quantification from non-contrast CT using active contours and multiple atlases registration. This is a knowledge-based model that can segment both the heart and pericardium accurately by initializing the location and shape of the heart in large scale from multiple co-registered atlases and locking itself onto the pericardium actively. The deformation process is driven by pericardium detection, extracting only the white contours repre- senting the pericardium in the CT images. Following this step, we can calculate fat volume within this region (epicardial fat) using standard fat attenuation range. We validate our algorithm on CT datasets from 15 patients who underwent routine assessment of coronary calcium. Epicardial fat volume quantified by the algorithm (69.15 ± 8.25 cm3) and the expert (69.46 ± 8.80 cm3) showed excellent correlation (r = 0.96, p < 0.0001) with no significant differences by comparison of individual data points (p = 0.9). The algorithm achieved a Dice overlap of 0.93 (range 0.88 - 0.95). The total time was less than 60 sec on a standard windows computer. Our results show that fast accurate automated knowledge-based quantification of epicardial fat volume from non-contrast CT is feasible. To our knowledge, this is also the first fully automated algorithms reported for this task.
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