Analysis of 3D right ventricular shape from echocardiography

The right ventricle has a complex 3D shape, similar to a thick triangle that is wrapped around the ellipsoidal left ventricle. It consists of an inlet zone, a main (apical) part and an outflow tract. It contracts in a complex peristaltic manner. For diagnosis of right ventricular function, 3D cardiac ultrasound can be used. We have collected about 200 4D (3D+time) echocardiography studies of the right ventricle in various congenital heart disease patient groups as well as healthy controls. These studies have already been semiautomatically analysed using Tomtec 4DRV software. We would like to perform further analyses on this large collection of 3D+T geometrical shapes of the right ventricle, such as local curvature, different decompositions of shape change, right ventricular global motion and local deformation. We want to relate those to patient characteristics. MRI analyses are available on part of the patients as well.

Assignment

Purpose of this project: implementation of several shape analyses of the right ventricle. Basic code for reading the shape files and original image files and visualizing them is available. Depending on the skills and technical and clinical interest of the candidate, the assignment can be limited or extended to include more complex spatiotemporal shape analyses, statistical analyses of the results, visualization/comparison tools etc.

Short outline of the project (6-9 months)

·         Literature study on existing RV shape analyses

·         Design, implementation and testing of shape analysis methods

·         Generation of results on total data set

·         Optional: writing of publication, implementation of additional methods

 This project is in collaboraton with Hans Bosch from ErasmusMC

Requirements

·         Bachelor or master students Biomedical Engineering, Informatics, Clinical Technology or similar

·         Interest in medical imaging, biomedical research

·         Programming experience in MatLab, Python or C

Contact

Last modified: 2022-04-22