Exploring a modular approach to support the development and validation of cardiac image processing and analysis methods

• Autor(a) principal: Abrantes, João Gabriel Pinto de Matos e Castro
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/38406
• topic: Modular software approaches; OHIF; Cardiac images; CT; Image processing and analysis

Cardiac health is a big concern, worldwide, with cardiovascular disease (CVDs) being the most predominant cause of death, which makes the better and earlier diagnosis of such illnesses a top priority in public health. The technology supporting medical diagnosis, especially in cardiac CT, such as cardiac computerized tomography angiography (CTA) and CT Myocardial Perfusion(CTP), has been evolving at a fast pace providing a wide range of data on the anatomy and function of the heart. However, this range of data, due to its quantity and richness, is still not fully harnessed and the research to unravel its potential is still in high demand. While several alternatives for the design and development of novel methods exist, e.g., to visualize and explore this data, one important challenge concerns how to make them available for clinicians to test. The aim would be to enable full exploration of these methods in the clinical workflow, from early on, in development, to foster insight into their features and usefulness to inform improvement. In this regard, Project CAD-FACTS, in which this thesis is integrated, explores a modular solution to support the development of cardiac analysis methods by enabling their early deployment to the clinician’s office. To this effect, we define the requirements for such a platform and present the first instance of its development exploring the Open Health Imaging Foundation’s resources, the OHIF Viewer. At its current stage, we demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and the integration of simple image processing and reporting modules in the pipeline.