Abstract

BRAVO, Antonio; MEDINA, Rubén; PASSARIELLO, Gianfranco  and  GARREAU, Mireille. LEFT VENTRICLE DYNAMICAL SIMULATION USING FREE-FORM DEFORMATION. uct [online]. 2005, vol.9, n.36, pp.175-182. ISSN 1316-4821.

This paper proposes a computational 4-D (3-D + time) graphical based model for the left ventricle (LV) anatomical shape of the human heart. The model considers functional and anatomical features of the endocardial and epicardial walls of the left ventricle in normal hearts. The left ventricle is obtained after segmentation and contour based 3-D reconstruction of the Visual Human database or a Positron Emission Tomography database. The functional features are modeled based in parameters of LV motion models proposed in the literature. A Free-Form Deformation (FFD) approach is hierarchically applied on the reconstructed endocardial and epicardial surfaces for simulating global and local deformations associated to the relaxation-contraction of the ventricular cavity. This methods allows one to synthesize the 3-D geometry of the left ventricle during the cardiac cycle. A set of parameters describing the left ventricle dynamics are extracted from the simulated sequences and compared with results previously reported in the literature. Results of this comparison show that the proposed simulation model successfully reproduces the dynamical behavior of a real left ventricle.

Keywords : Simulation; Free-Form Deformation; Left Ventricle.