3-D reconstruction of myocardium from MRI and a display system of pulsating 3-D heart image

The 3-D shape of each part of the heart is reconstructed in a voxel space (32×32×32) by using 11 inner and/or outer boundary curves on 7 transverse, 2 coronal, and 2 sagittal images. Such 3-D shapes can be obtained at 23 cardiac phases in a cardiac cycle. Some quantitative cardiac parameters are calculated from the 3-D data and displayed as 3-D functional images. These include volume changes of each part of the heart, 3-D percent shortening of the regional wall of the left ventricle, and wall thickness. Also described is a hardware system which can display cross-sectional shapes of the pulsating heart, as well as 3-D shapes of each part or combined parts of the heart