The Live Wire Approach for the Segmentation of Left Ventricle Electron-Beam CT Images
Martin Urschler, Heinz Mayer, Regine Bolter, Franz W. Leberl · 2002
Measuring the volume of heart ventricles is an important issue in heart disease diagnosis. Therefore many radiologists investigate computer tomographic images, searching for representative projections of the left ventricle. They use parametric models by measuring ellipse parameters in certain images under the assumption that the left ventricle has an ellipsoid shape. This paper describes the application of the LiveWire approach, an interactive segmentation technique which can be used as an alternative volume estimation method. The implementation of LiveWire approach and volume estimation was applied on 31 data sets showing the left ventricle in long-axis configuration from EBCT movie-mode images. We found an excellent correlation of 97% between volumes from an expert’s manually drawn ventricle contours and the contours produced with the LiveWire tool. The comparison of the LiveWire volumes with the parametric model shows a correlation of 84% lying in the same range as the manually drawn contours vs. the parametric model (86%). We conclude that LiveWire is an excellent tool for left ventricle segmentation in the hands of a radiologist.