Dynamic Cardiac Modeling for 3D Reconstruction from Ultrasound Imaging

Heart diseases are among the deadliest conditions in the western world. Early detection is a key toward efficient treatments. Cardiac imaging with US is of great help to practitioners for this, as it is cheaper than other imaging modalities for a first diagnosis. However, the heart being a deforming organ by nature, its 3-D reconstruction is subject to artefacts resulting from the non-sequential acquisition of the US images. While synchronizing the process to the heartbeat alleviates this effect, it makes the procedure slower. Instead, we propose to turn this very effect into helpful diagnostic cues as it captures information about how the heart is deforming. This information could be extracted to provide the clinician with both an accurate 3D reconstruction of the heart and with the dynamics of its deformation. Models of deforming organs’ surfaces already exist. However, they usually assume the surface to be inextensible and this needs to be relaxed to design a proper model of the heart.