Left atrial appendage automatic segmentation, in computed tomography images
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Fecha
2019
Autores
Huérfano, Y
Vera, M
Vera, M I
Valbuena, O
Gelvez-Almeida, E
Salazar-Torres, J
Molina, V
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Editor
IOP Publishing
Resumen
The left atrial appendage is one of the anatomical places where most frequently
blood thrombi occur. When migrating from the appendage, these thrombi, become blood
emboli that, potentially, can compromise the physiology and/or anatomy of cardiac or cerebral
blood vessels, being able to generate cerebrovascular events. The left atrial appendage
segmentation is very difficult due, mainly, to its location and the identical densitometric
information presents into of this appendage and around of the left atrium. In this paper, an
automatic technique is proposed to segment this appendage with the purpose of generating
important information to the procedure called left atrial appendage surgical closure. This
information is linked to the volume and the diameters of the left atrial appendage. The
technique consists of a digital pre-processing stage, based on filtering processes and definition
of a region of interest and, of one segmentation stage that considers a clustering method. The
results are promising and they allow us to calculate useful quantitative variables when
characterizing the most lethal appendix of the human body represented by the mentioned
appendage. These results are very important in clinical processes where both the shape and
volume of this appendage are vital for detecting and monitoring some vascular diseases such as
cardiac embolism, arterial hypertension and stroke, among others.