Cardiac MR Image Segmentation Techniques: an overview

Broadly speaking, the objective in cardiac image segmentation is to delineate the outer and inner walls of the heart to segment out either the entire or parts of the organ boundaries. This paper will focus on MR images as they are the most widely used in cardiac segmentation – as a result of the accurate morphological information and better soft tissue contrast they provide. This cardiac segmentation information is very useful as it eases physical measurements that provides useful metrics for cardiac diagnosis such as infracted volumes, ventricular volumes, ejection fraction, myocardial mass, cardiac movement, and the like. But, this task is difficult due to the intensity and texture similarities amongst the different cardiac and background structures on top of some noisy artifacts present in MR images. Thus far, various researchers have proposed different techniques to solve some of the pressing issues. This seminar paper presents an overview of representative medical image segmentation techniques. The paper also highlights preferred approaches for segmentation of the four cardiac chambers: the left ventricle (LV), right ventricle (RV), left atrium (LA) and right atrium (RA), on short axis image planes.