The CardioLab suite for GIMIAS allows to perform an entire workflow from medical images to characterization and quantification of myocardial diseases and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) planning, in order to allow the clinician to adequately plan the treatment and the intervention, if required.
Main features:
load and navigate images in DICOM format from different clinical equipments and different modalities (MRI, CT, 3DUS)
visualization of 3D + t images with corresponding ECG
connection to hospital internal PACS
automatic segmentation of heart chambers and full heart
manual correction of segmentation
quantification of heart shape and morphology over time
17 segments bull's eye plot subdivision
analysis of local or global information: volume evolution, wall thickness, stress and strain measurements
graphical, numerical and colormap representation
generation of 3D volumetric mesh of the heart
computation and visualization of fibers orientation and Purkinje cables
placement of pacemaker leads
visualization of the electrical activation simulation
comparison of treated and untreated cases
Step 1 - Load medical image: Use the DICOM plug-in to load the patient's medical image. This plug-in allows to load different image modalities: MRI, CT, 3D ultrasound, SPECT.
Step 2- Cardiac segmentation: The heart geometry can be extracted using automatic and semi-automatic segmentation techniques. Manual correction tools can be used to correct the geometry if the result of segmentation is not accurate enough.
Step 3 - Cardiac quantification: The cardiac quantification algorithms allow to extract quantitative information that characterize the heart shape.Â
Local and/or global information like volume , wall thickness, stress and strain, can be visualized both as graphs/numerical values or as colormap information on top of the shape model, and is computed using 17 segments bull’s eye plot subdivision.
Step 4 - Patient specific modelling: these tools allow to generate the finite-element meshes required for the simulations and build additional structures such as fiber orientation and the Purkinje system.
Step 5 - Therapy planning: Placement of pacemaker leads can be simulated for CRT planning and the result of electromechanical simulations can be visualized.
