Automatic Left Ventricle Segmentation Algorithm using K-mean Clustering and Graph Searching on Cardiac MRI

To prevent cardiac diseases, quantifying cardiac function is important in routine clinical practice by analyzing blood volume and ejection fraction. These works have been manually performed and hence it requires computational costs and varies depending on the operator. In this paper, an automatic left ventricle segmentation algorithm is presented to segment left ventricle on cardiac magnetic resonance images. After coil sensitivity of MRI images is compensated, a K-mean clustering scheme is applied to segment blood area. A graph searching scheme is employed to correct the segmentation error from coil distortions and noises. Using cardiac MRI images from 38 subjects, the presented algorithm is performed to calculate blood volume and ejection fraction and compared with those of manual contouring by experts and GE MASS software. Based on the results, the presented algorithm achieves the average accuracy of 6.2mL5.6, 2.9mL3.0 and 2.1%1.5 in diastolic phase, systolic phase and ejection fraction, respectively. Moreover, the presented algorithm minimizes user intervention rates which was critical to automatize algorithms in previous researches.