Quantitative shape analysis of left ventricular cine-CT images

The shape of the endocardial and epicardial borders of excised dog hearts digitized and traced from cine-CT (computer tomography) images have been quantitatively compared with those obtained from actual dissected cross sections digitized and traced with a video camera. Results from a standard Fourier analysis have been compared with those obtained from the proposed boundary matching descriptor method. Both measures indicate that the LV (left ventricle) shape is not altered by the proposed reconstruction procedure. The Fourier analysis indicates that the epicardial borders are more accurately reproduced than the endocardial borders (p<0.05). Results from the introduced technique show that there is no difference in accuracy between the two borders. Reasons are offered for this disparity. The new shape descriptor allows the identification of specific regions in the borders where the shapes do not match. On the basis of these data, the shape of the LV images from cine-CT closely agree with the shape of the actual cross sections obtained by dissection. Errors in shape reproduction appear to be random and not systematic