• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an automatic left ventricle segmentation method in computed tomography angiography (CTA) using separating energy function. First, we smooth the images by applying anisotropic diffusion filter to remove noise. Secondly, the volume of interest (VOI) is detected by using k-means clustering. Thirdly, we divide the left and right heart with split energy function. Finally, we extract only left ventricle from left and right heart with optimizing cost function including orientation term.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.660-669
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• 2020

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of a deep learning-based automated segmentation of the left ventricle (LV) myocardium using cardiac CT. Materials and Methods: To develop a fully automated algorithm, 100 subjects with coronary artery disease were randomly selected as a development set (50 training / 20 validation / 30 internal test). An experienced cardiac radiologist generated the manual segmentation of the development set. The trained model was evaluated using 1000 validation set generated by an experienced technician. Visual assessment was performed to compare the manual and automatic segmentations. In a quantitative analysis, sensitivity and specificity were calculated according to the number of pixels where two three-dimensional masks of the manual and deep learning segmentations overlapped. Similarity indices, such as the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), were used to evaluate the margin of each segmented masks. Results: The sensitivity and specificity of automated segmentation for each segment (1-16 segments) were high (85.5-100.0%). The DSC was 88.3 ± 6.2%. Among randomly selected 100 cases, all manual segmentation and deep learning masks for visual analysis were classified as very accurate to mostly accurate and there were no inaccurate cases (manual vs. deep learning: very accurate, 31 vs. 53; accurate, 64 vs. 39; mostly accurate, 15 vs. 8). The number of very accurate cases for deep learning masks was greater than that for manually segmented masks. Conclusion: We present deep learning-based automatic segmentation of the LV myocardium and the results are comparable to manual segmentation data with high sensitivity, specificity, and high similarity scores.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.36 no.10
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• pp.825-835
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• 2009

The advance in medical technology has decreased death rates from diseases such as tubercle, pneumonia, malnutrition, and hepatitis. However, death rates from cardiac diseases are still increasing. To prevent cardiac diseases and quantify cardiac function, magnetic resonance imaging not harmful to the body is used for calculating blood volumes and ejection fraction(EF) on routine clinics. In this paper, automatic left ventricle(LV) segmentation is presented to segment LV and calculate blood volume and EF, which can replace labor intensive and time consuming manual contouring. Radial threshold determination is designed to segment LV and blood volume and EF are calculated. Especially, basal slices which were difficult to segment in previous researches are segmented automatically almost without user intervention. On short axis cardiac MRI of 36 subjects, the presented algorithm is compared with manual contouring and General Electronic MASS software. The results show that the presented algorithm performs in similar to the manual contouring and outperforms the MASS software in accuracy.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2022

The Cardiac Gated Blood Pool (GBP) scintigram, a nuclear medicine imaging, calculates the left ventricular Ejection Fraction (EF) by segmenting the left ventricle from the heart. However, in order to accurately segment the substructure of the heart, specialized knowledge of cardiac anatomy is required, and depending on the expert's processing, there may be a problem in which the left ventricular EF is calculated differently. In this study, using the DeepLabV3 architecture, GBP images were trained on 93 training data with a ResNet-50 backbone. Afterwards, the trained model was applied to 23 separate test sets of GBP to evaluate the reproducibility of the region of interest and left ventricular EF. Pixel accuracy, dice coefficient, and IoU for the region of interest were 99.32±0.20, 94.65±1.45, 89.89±2.62(%) at the diastolic phase, and 99.26±0.34, 90.16±4.19, and 82.33±6.69(%) at the systolic phase, respectively. Left ventricular EF was calculated to be an average of 60.37±7.32% in the ROI set by humans and 58.68±7.22% in the ROI set by the deep learning segmentation model. (p<0.05) The automated segmentation method using deep learning presented in this study similarly predicts the average human-set ROI and left ventricular EF when a random GBP image is an input. If the automatic segmentation method is developed and applied to the functional examination method that needs to set ROI in the field of cardiac scintigram in nuclear medicine in the future, it is expected to greatly contribute to improving the efficiency and accuracy of processing and analysis by nuclear medicine specialists.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.15B no.6
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• pp.507-516
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• 2008

Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death in the world. Quantification of cardiac function is performed by manually calculating blood volume and ejection fraction in routine clinical practice, but it requires high computational costs. In this study, an automatic left ventricle (LV) segmentation algorithm using short-axis cine cardiac MRI is presented. We compensate coil sensitivity of magnitude images depending on coil location, classify edge information after extracting edges, and segment LV by applying region-growing segmentation. We design a weighting function for intensity signal and calculate a blood volume of LV considering partial voxel effects. Using cardiac cine SSFP of 38 subjects with Cornell University IRB approval, we compared our algorithm to manual contour tracing and MASS software. Without partial volume effects, we achieved segmentation accuracy of $3.3mL{\pm}5.8$ (standard deviation) and $3.2mL{\pm}4.3$ in diastolic and systolic phases, respectively. With partial volume effects, the accuracy was $19.1mL{\pm}8.8$ and $10.3mL{\pm}6.1$ in diastolic and systolic phases, respectively. Also in ejection fraction, the accuracy was $-1.3%{\pm}2.6$ and $-2.1%{\pm}2.4$ without and with partial volume effects, respectively. Results support that the proposed algorithm is exact and useful for clinical practice.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.18B no.2
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• pp.57-66
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• 2011

To prevent cardiac diseases, quantifying cardiac function is important in routine clinical practice by analyzing blood volume and ejection fraction. These works have been manually performed and hence it requires computational costs and varies depending on the operator. In this paper, an automatic left ventricle segmentation algorithm is presented to segment left ventricle on cardiac magnetic resonance images. After coil sensitivity of MRI images is compensated, a K-mean clustering scheme is applied to segment blood area. A graph searching scheme is employed to correct the segmentation error from coil distortions and noises. Using cardiac MRI images from 38 subjects, the presented algorithm is performed to calculate blood volume and ejection fraction and compared with those of manual contouring by experts and GE MASS software. Based on the results, the presented algorithm achieves the average accuracy of 6.2mL${\pm}$5.6, 2.9mL${\pm}$3.0 and 2.1%${\pm}$1.5 in diastolic phase, systolic phase and ejection fraction, respectively. Moreover, the presented algorithm minimizes user intervention rates which was critical to automatize algorithms in previous researches.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.273-281
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation method of the endo- and epicardial boundary by using ray-casting profile based on intensity distribution and gradient information in CT images. First, endo-cardial boundary points are detected by using adaptive thresholding and seeded region growing. To include papillary muscles inside the boundary, the endo-cardial boundary points are refined by using ray-casting based profile. Second, epi-cardial boundary points which have both a myocardial intensity value and a maximum gradient are detected by using ray-casting based adaptive gradient profile. Finally, to preserve an elliptical or circular shape, the endo- and epi-cardial boundary points are refined by using elliptical interpolation and B-spline curve fitting. Then, curvature-based contour fitting is performed to overcome problems associated with heterogeneity of the myocardium intensity and lack of clear delineation between myocardium and adjacent anatomic structures. To evaluate our method, we performed visual inspection, accuracy and processing time. For accuracy evaluation, average distance difference and overalpping region ratio between automatic segmentation and manual segmentation are calculated. Experimental results show that the average distnace difference was $0.56{\pm}0.24mm$. The overlapping region ratio was $82{\pm}4.2%$ on average. In all experimental datasets, the whole process of our method was finished within 1 second.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.561-564
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• 2010

의학과 기술 발달로 인해 질병과 사고에 의한 사망률은 줄어들었으나, 심장 관련 질환에 의한 사망률은 증가하였다. 심장 질환을 예방하는 데는 정기적인 검진을 통해 심장기능을 분석하고 관찰하는 것이 중요하다. 심장 기능의 분석은 이완기와 수축기 사이의 혈류량 및 심박구출률 계산을 통한 심장 운동능력 평가에 의해 이루어진다. 본 연구에서는 심장 단축 자기공명영상에서 좌심실 영역을 자동 분할하여 혈류량 및 심박 구출률을 계산하는 알고리즘을 제안한다. K평균 군집화 기법을 적용하여 좌심실을 분할하고, 그래프 탐색 기법에 기반하여 분할 오류를 수정하였다. 15명의 지원자에 대해 제안하는 알고리즘을 사용하여 혈류량과 심박구출률을 계산하였고, 수동윤곽검출 및 General Electronics 사의 MASS 소프트웨어와 비교하였다. 제안한 알고리즘의 수동윤곽검출과 차이는 혈류량의 경우 평균적으로 이완기에 $4.6mL{\pm}3.9$, 수축기에 $2.1mL{\pm}2.4$로 나타났고, 심박구출률은 $1.8%{\pm}1.7$이었다. 전반적으로 MASS소프트웨어에 비해 좋은 성능을 나타내었다.