Incorporation of the Living Heart Model Into the 4-D XCAT Phantom for Cardiac Imaging Research

The 4-D extended cardiac-torso (XCAT) phantom has provided a valuable tool to study the effects of anatomy and motion on medical images, especially cardiac motion. One limitation of the XCAT was that it did not have a physiological basis which to realistically simulate variations in cardiac function. In this paper, we incorporate into the XCAT anatomy the four-chamber finite element (FE) living heart model (LHM) developed by the living heart project. The LHM represents the state of the art in cardiac FE simulation because of its ability to accurately replicate the biomechanical motion of the entire heart and its variations. We create a new series of 4-D phantoms capable of simulating patients with varying body sizes and shapes; cardiac positions, orientations, and dynamics. While extendable to other imaging modalities and technologies, our goal is to use the FE-enhanced XCAT models to investigate the optimal use of computed tomography for the evaluation of coronary artery disease. With the ability to simulate realistic, predictive, patient quality 4-D imaging data, the enhanced XCAT models will enable optimization studies to identify the most promising systems or system parameters for further clinical validation.