A new method incorporating deep learning with shape priors for left ventricular segmentation in myocardial perfusion SPECT images
This is an incremental improvement for medical imaging researchers and clinicians in cardiology, enhancing automated measurement of left ventricular functional parameters.
The paper tackled the problem of accurately segmenting the left ventricle in myocardial perfusion SPECT images for assessing cardiac function, achieving high Dice similarity coefficients (e.g., 0.9903 for epicardium) and Hausdorff distances (e.g., 7.6121 mm for epicardium).
Background: The assessment of left ventricular (LV) function by myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS) relies on accurate myocardial segmentation. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a new method incorporating deep learning with shape priors to accurately extract the LV myocardium for automatic measurement of LV functional parameters. Methods: A segmentation architecture that integrates a three-dimensional (3D) V-Net with a shape deformation module was developed. Using the shape priors generated by a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm, the model output was then constrained and guided during the model training for quick convergence and improved performance. A stratified 5-fold cross-validation was used to train and validate our models. Results: Results of our proposed method agree well with those from the ground truth. Our proposed model achieved a Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.9573(0.0244), 0.9821(0.0137), and 0.9903(0.0041), a Hausdorff distances (HD) of 6.7529(2.7334) mm, 7.2507(3.1952) mm, and 7.6121(3.0134) mm in extracting the endocardium, myocardium, and epicardium, respectively. Conclusion: Our proposed method achieved a high accuracy in extracting LV myocardial contours and assessing LV function.