Patent ID: 8131043

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting interventricular dyssynchrony, including: an image segment processor segmenting a left ventricle and a right ventricle in each of a plurality of source images of a heart to form left and right ventricle segments in a corresponding plurality of segmented images, each source image including at least a portion of a cross section of the heart along a short axis plane, each source image including cross sections of the right and left ventricles of the heart in common spatial relation along the short axis plane and in common temporal relation in reference to a cardiac cycle associated with the heart, the plurality of source images and corresponding plurality of segmented images being temporally-spaced in relation to the cardiac cycle; and an image classifier, in operative communication with the image segment processor, determining a first cross-sectional area associated with the left ventricle segment and a second cross-sectional area associated with the right ventricle segment for each segmented image, comparing, at least in part based on use of a linear regression model, the first and second cross-sectional areas for each segmented image, and classifying the heart in an interventricular dyssynchronous class or a non-dyssynchronous class, based at least in part on the comparing, by classifying the heart in the non-dyssynchronous class if the linear regression model attains statistical significance and indicates a linear relation between the first and second cross-sectional areas over the cardiac cycle and by classifying the heart in the interventricular dyssynchronous class if the linear regression model indicates there is not a linear relation between the first and second cross-sectional areas over the cardiac cycle.