UNIFIED APPROACH TO QUANTIFY & VISUALIZE CARDIAC IMAGERY

心脏成像已成为评估心脏功能的重要工具 冠心病患者的诊断和预后。这个 冠状动脉阻塞的范围和严重程度(由 冠状动脉造影术)，以及心肌梗死程度 低灌注率(由灌注断层扫描提供)和 心肌功能障碍(例如，通过测量 通过磁共振成像(MRI)进行心肌增厚，有 很早就被认为与疾病的发病率和死亡率直接相关 患有冠状动脉疾病的患者。然而，在临床实践中，这些 成像研究通常是相互独立地查看的，并且 传统上仅以2维显示，严重限制了 临床医生能够综合出异常的真实程度。 准确评估冠状动脉病变的范围和严重程度 需要多维(等于或大于3)的集成 从这些信息中独立获得的解剖和生理信息 心脏成像方式。然而，这种整合在传统上是 主观性强、耗时长、缺乏规范性、难于 多维概念化。该计划的长远目标 在这项竞争性的继续申请中提议的研究是 通过继续开发和验证来克服这些限制 基于计算机的方法来多维量化、统一和 显示冠状动脉树和心肌的分布 灌流和增厚。 在下一个资助期内，来自埃默里大学和 佐治亚理工学院建议继续将他们的重点放在 努力全面完成每个项目的开发和验证 以下方法：1)多维数据的完全自动化 基于任意、非正交的冠状动脉血管重建 使用非平行几何的双平面血管造影投影，2) 心肌灌注的多维采样与再现 分布，3)基于多维计数的量化 多门控起始性心肌增厚的幅度和相位 灌注断层扫描研究，以及4)完全自动化的 多维冠状动脉血管与心肌的统一 分配。此外，统一的概念将扩大到 包括MRI显示的心肌增厚分布。 到目前为止在这些目标方面取得的广泛进展 资助期是支持进一步研究的有力证据， 这种多维统一方案的开发和临床应用 接近。

Cardiac imaging has emerged as an important tool for assessing the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with coronary artery disease. The extent and severity of coronary arterial obstruction (provided by coronary arteriography), along with the degree of myocardial hypoperfusion (provided by perfusion tomography) and the extent of myocardial dysfunction (provided for instance with the measurement of myocardial thickening by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) together, have long been recognized to be directly related to morbidity and mortality in patients with coronary artery disease. Yet, in clinical practice these imaging studies are most often viewed independently of each other and conventionally displayed in only 2 dimensions, severely limiting the clinicians ability to synthesize the true extent of the abnormalities. Accurate assessment of the extent and severity of coronary artery disease requires the multidimensional (equal to or greater than 3) integration of anatomic and physiologic information obtained independently from these cardiac imaging modalities. However, this integration has traditionally been subjective, time consuming, lacking standardization and difficult to conceptualize multidimensionally. The long term objectives of the proposed research in this competing continuation application are to overcome these limitations by continuing to develop and validate computer-based methods to multidimensionally quantify, unify and visualize the coronary arterial tree and the distributions of myocardial perfusion and thickening. During this next funding period, collaborators from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology propose to continue to focus their efforts in fully completing the development and validation of each of the following methodologies: 1) complete automation of multidimensional reconstruction of the coronary vasculature from arbitrary, non-orthogonal biplane angiographic projections using non-parallel geometry, 2) multidimensional sampling and rendering of myocardial perfusion distributions, 3) multidimensional count based quantification of the amplitude and phase of the onset of myocardial thickening from multigated perfusion tomographic studies, and 4) complete automation of the unification of the multidimensional coronary vasculature with myocardial distributions. In addition, the unification concept will be extended to include myocardial thickening distributions from MRI. The extensive progress thus far achieved in these aims during the initial funding period is strong evidence to support further research, development, and clinical implementation of this multidimensional unified approach.