Detection of Quiescent Phases in Echocardiography Data using Non-Linear Filtering and Boundary Detection

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Lakshminarayan Ravichandran, Emory University; Carson A. Wick, Georgia Institute of Technology; Srini Tridandapani, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2012-01-01
• Publisher: IEEE
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2012 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346241
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Conference proceedings / IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
• ISSN: 1062-922X
• Volume: 2012
• Start Page: 1562
• End Page: 1565
• Grant/Funding Information: The project described was supported by Award Number K23EB013221 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
• Keywords: Engineering; Engineering, Biomedical; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic; Science & Technology; Technology
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Radiology; Engineering, Biomedical

Abstract

In order to detect the quasi-stationary states of the heart within a cardiac cycle from echocardiography data, we present an algorithm that uses non-linear filtering and boundary detection. The non-linear filtering algorithm involves anisotropic diffusion to remove the speckle noise from the data and to smoothen the homogeneous regions while preserving the edges. Following this, we perform binary thresholding and boundary detection, and observe the positional changes in the region of interest. From a series of echocardiography images, we derived the regions of cardiac quiescence, which we then plotted on the electrocardiograph (ECG) R-R interval. It is observed that the quiescence occurs in the diastolic region of the ECG signal, but the position and length of quiescence varies across multiple cardiac cycles for the same individual. © 2012 IEEE.