Segmentation of Left Ventricle with a Coupled Length Regularization and Sparse Composite Shape Prior: a Variational Approach

Segmentation of left ventricles in Cine MR images plays an important role in analyzing cardiac functions. In this study, we propose a variational method that incorporates both prior knowledge on geometrical coupling and shapes of the endo- and epicardium. Specifically, we dynamically maintain and update a smoothly varying distance between the endo- and epicardial contours, represented by a pair of level set functions, with a novel coupling energy embedded in the length regularization. We encode the shape prior with a sparse composite model based on a set of training templates. A robust fidelity with Gaussian mixture models is employed to provide robust intensity estimates in each subregion under insufficient local gradient information. Quantitative evaluation of the proposed method demonstrates competitive/better DSC and APD accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art approaches