Model-based segmentation of short-axis MR cardiac images

Reliable automatic segmentation of MR cardiac images is still an important problem in medical image processing. Although image data quality has improved considerably during the last years, this segmentation is still considered a difficult problem. Manual segmentation is hardly an option as this is extremely labour intensive. This paper describes a combined bottom-up and top-down approach to the problem of automatic segmentation of short-axis MR cardiac images, i.e. extract the boundaries of the left and right ventricle and the myocardium. The method is evaluated using 69 datasets for which manual segmentations were available.