Patent ID: 7711160
Filing Date: 2010-05-04
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method of determining optimal viewing planes for a cardiac image acquisition, the method comprising: acquiring a set of sagittal, axial, and coronal images reformatted from a 3-dimensional image of a heart, said axial, coronal and sagittal images orthogonally intersecting with each other, each said image comprising a plurality of intensities defined on a 2-dimensional grid of points; segmenting a blood pool from said sagittal heart images; locating a line where each of said axial and coronal images intersects said sagittal image and analyzing an intensity along said intersection line to find border points of said blood pool in each said intersection line; locating points on said blood pool borders that are radially mapped from a mid-point of each said intersection line; fitting an ellipsoid to said blood pool border points that approximates a 3-dimensional left-ventricle (LV) bloodpool border; analyzing said ellipsoid to find a long axis orientation of said heart; finding a short axis direction of the heart by finding the septal direction in a sagittal or a short axis image of the heart by finding a center of the LV bloodpool in said image, finding insertion points where said LV meets said septum, forming an angle using the two insertion points and the bloodpool center, the angle having a vertex at the bloodpool center, bisecting the angle, and determining the septal direction as the direction of the bisection, wherein said long axis and said short axis define an optimal viewing plane that determines a third axis normal to said long and short axes, said long, short and third axes forming a full natural coordinate frame for said heart, and acquiring one or more new images of the heart with respect to said full natural coordinate frame of said heart, wherein said steps of acquiring a set of images, segmenting a blood pool, locating a line, locating points, fitting an ellipsoid, analyzing said ellipsoid, finding a short axis direction of the heart, and acquiring one or more new images are performed by a computer processor.