Towards automatic quantitative analysis of cardiac MR perfusion images

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a powerful technique for imaging cardiovascular diseases. The introduction of cardiovascular MRI into clinical practice is however hampered by the lack of efficient and reliable automatic image analysis methods. This paper focuses on the automatic evaluation of the perfusion of blood in the myocardium (the heart muscle) from cardiac MR perfusion image series, acquired using contrast-enhanced ECG-triggered MRI. We have developed a semi-automatic quantitative analysis method with which the perfusion image series can be analysed in only a few minutes. The method is described in this paper and preliminary validation results are presented.