Seminar Abstract

“Fiber Tracing and Image Registration in MRI and DTMRI Data”

The Purkinje network is part of a specialized cardiac tissue network—the cardiac conduction system—and plays a role in the rapid propagation of impulses to the ventricular muscle. While the basic role of the Purkinje network is understood, some aspects of its behavior, for example its role in defibrillation shock response, remain unanswered.

The small size of the individual fibers and their positioning in the network makes direct observation of the network and its behavior difficult. Computer modeling of Purkinje network can provide understanding its structural implications with respect to electromechanical and biochemical properties of the heart. We develop a 3-D structural model of the Purkinje network by analyzing cardiac images. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data were manually marked to form a ground truth fiber network to which the fiber network we generate by a nonlinear filter can be compared by taking symmetrized chamfer and Hausdorff distances between fiber tracts. We develop a block matching technique for image registration of Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DTMRI) data. We were able to detect and recover transformations of the form x2 = Rx1 + t in both real and synthetic data.