Abstract: Medical imaging is very useful in the assessment and treatment of many diseases. To deal with the great amount of data provided by imaging scanners and extract quantitative information that physicians can interpret, many analysis algorithms have been developed. Any process of analysis always consists of a first step of segmenting some particular structure. In medical imaging, structures are not always well defined and suffer from noise artifacts thus, ordinary segmentation methods are not well suited. The ones that seem to give better results are those based on deformable models. Nevertheless, despite their capability of mixing image features together with smoothness constraints that may compensate for image irregularities, these are naturally local methods, i. e., each node of the active contour evolve taking into account information about its neighbors and some other weak constraints about flexibility and smoothness, but not about the global shape that they should find. Due to the fact that structures to be segmented are the same for all cases but with some inter and intra-patient variation, the incorporation of a priori knowledge about shape in the segmentation method will provide robustness to it. Active Shape Models is an algorithm based on the creation of a shape model called Point Distribution Model. It performs a segmentation using only shapes similar than those previously learned from a training set that capture most of the variation presented by the structure. This algorithm works by updating shape nodes along a normal segment which often can be too restrictive. For this reason we propose a generalization of this algorithm that we call Generalized Active Shape Models and fully integrates the a priori knowledge given by the Point Distribution Model with deformable models or any other appropriate segmentation method. Two different applications to cardiac imaging of this generalized method are developed and promising results are shown.

Abstract: Presentamos una experiencia en Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos (ABP) realizada los últimos cuatro años en Gráficos por Computador 2, asignatura de Ingeniería Informática, de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería (ETSE) de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB). Utilizamos un entorno Moodle adaptado por nosotros llamado Caronte para poder gestionar la documentación generada en ABP. Primero se presenta la asignatura, basada en dos itinerarios para cursarla: ABP y TPPE (Teoría, Problemas, Prácticas, Examen). El alumno debe escoger uno de ellos. Ambos itinerarios generan una cantidad importante de documentación (entregas de trabajos y prácticas, correcciones, ejercicios, etc.) a gestionar. En la comunicación presentamos los espacios electrónicos Moodle de ambos itinerarios. Finalmente, mostramos los resultados de encuestas realizadas a los alumnos para finalmente exponer las conclusiones de la experiencia en ABP y el uso de Moodle, así como plantear mejoras y temas de discusión.

Abstract: Impairment of left ventricular contractility due to cardiovascular diseases is reflected in left ventricle (LV) motion patterns. An abnormal change of torsion or long axis shortening LV values can help with the diagnosis and follow-up of LV dysfunction. Tagged Magnetic Resonance (TMR) is a widely spread medical imaging modality that allows estimation of the myocardial tissue local deformation. In this work, we introduce a novel variational framework for extracting the left ventricle dynamics from TMR sequences. A bi-dimensional representation space of TMR images given by Gabor filter banks is defined. Tracking of the phases of the Gabor response is combined using a variational framework which regularizes the deformation field just at areas where the Gabor amplitude drops, while restoring the underlying motion otherwise. The clinical applicability of the proposed method is illustrated by extracting normality models of the ventricular torsion from 19 healthy subjects.

Abstract: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (Cardiac MRI) has become a gold standard diagnostic technique for the assessment of cardiac mechanics, allowing the non-invasive calculation of left ventric- ular long axis longitudinal shortening (LVLS) and absolute myocardial torsion (AMT) between basal and apical left ventricular slices, a movement directly related to the helicoidal anatomic disposition of the myocardial fibers. The aim of this study is to determine AMT and LVLS behaviour and normal values from a group of healthy subjects. A group of 21 healthy volunteers (15 males) (age: 23–55 y.o., mean:30.7 ± 7.5) were prospectively included in an obser- vational study by Cardiac MRI. Left ventricular rotation (degrees) was calculated by custom-made software (Harmonic Phase Flow) in consecutive LV short axis planes tagged cine-MRI sequences. AMT was determined from the difference between basal and apical planes LV rotations. LVLS (%) was determined from the LV longitudinal and horizontal axis cine-MRI images. All the 21 cases studied were interpretable, although in three cases the value of the LV apical rotation could not be determined. The mean rotation of the basal and apical planes at end-systole were -3.71° ± 0.84° and 6.73° ± 1.69° (n:18) respectively, resulting in a LV mean AMT of 10.48° ± 1.63° (n:18). End-systolic mean LVLS was 19.07 ± 2.71%. Cardiac MRI allows for the calculation of AMT and LVLS, fundamental functional components of the ventricular twist mechanics conditioned, in turn, by the anatomical helical layout of the myocardial fibers. These values provide complementary information about systolic ventricular function in relation to the traditional parameters used in daily practice.