U-Net Neural Network for Locating Midpoint of Insertion Zone of Transcatheter Aortic Valves in CTA Images

Identifying the insertion zone of transcatheter heart valves can be time-consuming and suffers from variability and reproducibility problems. We present a deep leaning approach in CTA images to locate the midpoint of the insertion zone. A U-Net neural network is implemented to automatically segment the aortic valve on axial projection. The insertion zone midpoint is calculated based on the range of slices with the more concentrated area of activated pixels. We found a very low systematic error with a median computed error of 0.38mm and interquartile range of 0.15 – 0.75mm. The proposed model was shown to be a robust and powerful tool to automatically locate the insertion zone midpoint and we believe it will play a critical role on automated assessment of aortic stenosis.