Philips Research Technology Backgrounder

Heart Modeling

New powerful image analysis and modeling software from Philips Research to reveal detailed heart function will save cardiologists a great deal of time and effort in extracting the information they need for the accurate diagnosis of heart disorders. As a result, patients will benefit from faster and more reliable test results, more effective and personalized therapies and speedier recovery.

Using advanced image analysis techniques combined with detailed clinical knowledge about the structure and function of the human heart, scientists at Philips Research have developed an innovative cardiac modeling system that extracts a large number of morphological and physiological measurements from multi-slice CT (Computed Tomography) images. In more than 90% of the cases it does so entirely automatically, saving cardiologists a great deal of costly time and effort. Although Philips has used cardiac CT as an initial application and proof of concept, Philips believes that this new modeling technology will be applicable in other areas of radiology and other imaging modalities as well.

Even today, the accurate delineation of a cardiac chamber in an individual patient’s CT scan requires a great deal of tiring manual work at a computer screen. As a result, it is often only done for the particular heart chamber of interest – usually the left ventricle that pumps blood into the aorta. This, however, reveals little information about total heart function. By accurately creating a patient-specific 3-D model of all four cardiac chambers (the left and right atria and ventricles) plus the connected vasculature (the aorta and the pulmonary artery and vein etc.), Philips’ new cardiac model gives cardiologists quick and easy access to a wide range of clinical measurements such as ventricular and atrial volumes, ejection fractions (how much blood each chamber pumps out with each contraction) and motion or thickening of the myocardium. Because they now are able to view all of these measurements at once, they have a much clearer picture of how a patient’s heart is functioning as a complete organ.

It is the large amount of anatomical information built into Philips Research’s cardiac model that sets it apart from others. Most models merely attempt to map continuous surfaces, whereas the Philips model builds different surfaces from surface-specific elements that carry with them structural and functional information derived from clinical knowledge or from statistically derived CT image characteristics. This results in a much more accurate model from which patient-specific information can be more easily extracted. On bringing a CT scan onto the screen, the software automatically orients the model to match that of the scan and then adjusts it accordingly. The whole process only takes a few seconds to complete and delivers highly reliable and reproducible results.

Other applications could include model-guided intervention to improve the accuracy of keyhole surgery, or the assessment of heart function before and after treatment for atrial fibrillation.