Improvement of knowledge-based automatic slice-alignment method for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging

Background Automatic slice alignment allows images of the six standard cardiac planes as defined in the SCMR Image Acquisition Protocols to be obtained by simple and quick operation. Our previously reported method can detect these planes using ECG-gated breath-hold axial multislice images [1]. Achieving higher accuracy and greater robustness for variation in clinical images will lead to improved usability and reliability, resulting in easier cardiac MR examinations. To achieve these goals, we have substantially refined our previously reported automatic slice-alignment method. A combination of knowledge-based recognition and image processing techniques is applied to multiple feature point search to reduce errors in automatic detection. Volunteer and clinical data were used to evaluate of the degree of improvement.