JUNO · Joint Volumetric Reconstruction and Automated Analysis of the Fetal Heart from Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Images
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2015-11-16 → 2017-11-15
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Joint Volumetric Reconstruction and Automated Analysis of the Fetal Heart from Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Images
The JUNO project was aimed at improving the present capabilities of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) by tackling its limitations with an image processing approach. The specific field of application was fetal CMR, but due to a lack of sufficient data of this type the project focused on the development of methods to improve aspects of CMR imaging in the adult. More specifically, the problem being addressed was the lack of automated techniques to evaluate and improve the quality of short-axis CMR image stacks, which are the reference images for structural and functional assessment of the heart. Quality control on these images is usually performed visually by the radiologist, necessarily leading to operator-dependent evaluations. Moreover, in the last decade several initiatives have been launched both within the EU and worldwide for the acquisition of large-scale open-access databases of CMR images (e.g. the UK Biobank, now ongoing, which will in the end include full CMR scans for 100’000 subjects). While for these large databases visual quality assessment and manual adjustments are unfeasible, failure to correctly identify corrupted scans might affect the results of subsequent automated analyses with undesirable effects. Accordingly, JUNO was dedicated to the development of techniques to allow fully-automated quality assessment and correction of CMR image stacks. The specific issues tackled were the following ones: 1) inter-slice motion detection & correction, 2) heart coverage estimation, 3) cardiac contrast estimation.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Recent advancements in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) have finally made possible static and dynamic in-vivo imaging of the fetal heart. This new capability has the potential to provide a fundamental new tool for structural and functional assessment of the fetal cardiovascular system, with groundbreaking clinical consequences. In fact, congenital heart diseases (CHDs) and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR, which induces cardiovascular remodeling) are among the leading causes of infant mortality worldwide. Fetal CMR imaging may potentially allow more accurate diagnosis of these conditions, and thus improve postnatal outcomes thanks to better in-utero therapy administration, delivery and perinatal intervention planning. Unfortunately, fetal CMR is currently limited to the acquisition of a single slice in time, allowing only qualitative and operator-dependent evaluation of the fetal heart. The JUNO project aims at improving the present capabilities of fetal CMR by tackling its limitations with an image processing approach. The specific goals are (1) development of a method for super resolution volumetric reconstruction of the fetal heart, using image registration techniques applied to a set of single-slice acquisitions; (2) development of automated segmentation methods, based on deformable models and atlases, for the identification of structures such as ventricular contours and main vessels’ boundaries; (3) extraction of quantitative functional parameters (e.g. stroke volume and ejection fraction) from datasets acquired from healthy, CHDs- and IUGR-affected fetuses, to test the feasibility of objective detection of these conditions. By achieving these goals, JUNO will provide an innovative set of methods allowing for the first time quantitative, noninvasive, functional assessment of the fetal cardiovascular system, and thus address a long standing clinical need for such methodology.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union