Automated Segmentation of the Right Ventricle in 3D Echocardiography: A Kalman Filter State Estimation Approach

As the right ventricle's (RV) role in cardiovascular diseases is being more widely recognized, interest in RV imaging, function and quantification is growing. However, there are currently few RV quantification methods for 3D echocardiography presented in the literature or commercially available. In this paper we propose an automated RV segmentation method for 3D echocardiographic images. We represent the RV geometry by a Doo-Sabin subdivision surface with deformation modes derived from a training set of manual segmentations. The segmentation is then represented as a state estimation problem and solved with an extended Kalman filter by combining the RV geometry with a motion model and edge detection. Validation was performed by comparing surface-surface distances, volumes and ejection fractions in 17 patients with aortic insufficiency between the proposed method, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and a manual echocardiographic reference. The algorithm was efficient with a mean computation time of 2.0 s. The mean absolute distances between the proposed and manual segmentations were 3.6 ± 0.7 mm. Good agreements of end diastolic volume, end systolic volume and ejection fraction with respect to MRI ( -26±24 mL, -16±26 mL and 0 ± 10%, respectively) and a manual echocardiographic reference (7 ± 30 mL, 13 ± 17 mL and -5±7%, respectively) were observed.