A FEM-based deformable model for the 3D segmentation and tracking of the heart in cardiac MRI

We present a new approach for the segmentation and tracking of the heart from cardiac MR multi-slice and multi-phase image sequences. An a priori model of the object to be segmented is defined. It is composed of a topology and a geometry of the object, and associated elastic material properties. The a priori model is immersed into the image data and submitted to a force field which pulls the model's interfaces towards the image edges. The equilibrium of the system is achieved by the minimization of the model's energy using the finite element method. The active region model (ARM) has been successfully applied to the segmentation and tracking of the heart in cardiac MRI. The deformed model directly provides clinically relevant parameters such as volumes and also physical and local parameters such as strains and stresses.