Outcome: Researchers from Center for Advanced Communications of Villanova University working with the physicians from the Gwynedd-Mercy Medical College have developed an image processing algorithm that can track the motion of heart’s left ventricle based on the ultrasound echocardiography videos.
Impact/Benefit: The tracking algorithm will provide cardiologists an invaluable tool to accelerate diagnosis of heart conditions that are difficult to assess with visual observations. The algorithm is also expected to help cardiologists to make faster decisions in critical care conditions.
Explanation: Ultrasound echocardiography provides a safe, cost effective, and non-invasive means of monitoring heart conditions. The current clinical practice of manual tracing of hearts left ventricle chamber in echocardiography image sequences is tedious, time consuming, and subjective. The tracking algorithm automatically identifies the left ventricle and tracks its motion through the echocardiography image sequence. As such, abnormal heart motions and contractions can be detected in a very fast and cost effective manner.
Tracking the heart’s Left Ventricle from an echocardiography image with a physician’s manual tracing (blue line) and computer algorithm (red line).
