Automatic Segmentation of the Left Atrium from Computed Tomography Angiography Images

Ann Biomed Eng. 2023 Mar 8. doi: 10.1007/s10439-023-03170-9. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTThe left atrial appendage (LAA) causes 91% of thrombi in atrial fibrillation patients, a potential harbinger of stroke. Leveraging computed tomography angiography (CTA) images, radiologists interpret the left atrium (LA) and LAA geometries to stratify stroke risk. Nevertheless, accurate LA segmentation remains a time-consuming task with high inter-observer variability. Binary masks of the LA and their corresponding CTA images were used to train and test a 3D U-Net to automate LA segmentation. One model was trained using the entire unified-image-volume while a second model was trained on regional patch-volumes which were run for inference and then assimilated back into the full volume. The unified-image-volume U-Net achieved median DSCs of 0.92 and 0.88 for the train and test sets, respectively; the patch-volume U-Net achieved median DSCs of 0.90 and 0.89 for the train and test sets, respectively. This indicates that the unified-image-volume and patch-volume U-Net models captured up to 88 and 89% of the LA/LAA boundary's regional complexity, respectively. Additionally, the results indicate that the LA/LAA were fully captured in most of the predicted segmentations. By automating the segmentation process, our deep learning model can expedite LA/LAA shape, informing stratification of stroke risk.PMID:36890303 | DOI:10.1007/s10439-023-03170-9

Source: Annals of Biomedical Engineering - March 8, 2023 Category: Biomedical Engineering Authors: Amaan Kazi Sage Betko Anish Salvi Prahlad G Menon Source Type: research