Freddy Odille1, Jennifer Steeden1,
Vivek Muthurangu2, David Atkinson1
1Centre for Medical Image Computing,
University College London, London, United Kingdom; 2Centre for
Cardiovascular MR, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, United Kingdom
Cardiac
flow measurements can be obtained from real-time phase contrast MRI. Due to
the compromised spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, automatic
segmentation of great vessels is challenging. Here, we propose to use
nonrigid registration of the time series of magnitude images (148 frames) to
propagate the segmentation performed
manually in a reference frame. The registration, based on optical
flow, includes smoothness constraints
in both space and time, and is computationally very efficient. Flow
measurements generated by manual and registration-based segmentations, as
well as stroke volumes, were compared in data from 10 volunteers (rest and
physical exercise), and showed good agreement.