A method and system for computing blood flow in coronary arteries from medical image data disclosed. Patient-specific anatomical measurements of a coronary artery tree are extracted from medical image data of a patient. A reference radius is estimated for each of a plurality of branches in the coronary artery tree from the patient-specific anatomical measurements of the coronary artery tree. A flow rate is calculated based on the reference radius for each of the plurality of branches of the coronary artery tree. A plurality of total flow rate estimates for the coronary artery tree are calculated. Each total flow rate estimate is calculated from the flow rates of branches of particular generation in the coronary artery tree. A total flow rate of the coronary artery tree is calculated based on the plurality of total flow rate estimates. The total flow rate of the coronary artery tree can be used to derive boundary conditions for simulating blood flow in the coronary artery tree.

A method for quantitative flow analysis of a fluid flowing in a conduit from a sequence of consecutive image frames of such a conduit, where such image frames are timely separated by a certain time interval, the method comprising: a) selecting a start image frame and an end image frame from the sequence either automatically or upon user input; b) determining a centerline of the conduit in the start image frame; c) determining a centerline of the conduit in the end image frame; d) selecting a common start point on the centerline of the start image frame and on the centerline of the end image frame either automatically or upon user input; e) selecting an end point on the centerline of the start image frame; f) selecting an end point on the centerline of the end image frame; g) calculating centerline distance between the start point and the end point of the start image frame; h) calculating centerline distance between the start point and the end point of the end image frame; and i) calculating a local flow velocity as a function of the centerline distances of g) and h) and a time interval between the start image frame and the end image frame.
A corresponding imaging device and computer program are also disclosed.

A medical image processing apparatus according to an embodiment includes processing circuitry. The processing circuitry acquires image data including image data of a blood vessel of a subject. The processing circuitry performs analysis related to the blood vessel by using the image data, and specifies a region of interest in the blood vessel based on a result of the analysis. The processing circuitry performs fluid analysis on a region other than the region of interest at a first accuracy, and performs fluid analysis on the region of interest at a second accuracy that is higher than the first accuracy.

An image processing apparatus according to an embodiment includes processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to acquire pieces of change information indicating temporal changes in computed tomography (CT) values of a myocardium and a right ventricular of a subject based on a plurality of chronologically consecutive images that are generated by an X-ray CT apparatus by scanning the subject to which a contrast agent is administered. The processing circuitry is configured to correct the piece of change information on the myocardium based on the piece of change information on the right ventricular.

The brain appears to have organized cardiac frequency angiographic phenomena with such coherence as to qualify as vascular pulse waves. Separate arterial and venous vascular pulse waves may be resolved. This disclosure states the method of extracting a spatiotemporal reconstruction of the cardiac frequency phenomena present in an angiogram obtained at faster than cardiac frequency. A wavelet transform is applied to each of the pixel-wise time signals of the angiogram. If there is motion alias then instead a high frequency resolution wavelet transform of the overall angiographic time intensity curve is cross-correlated to high temporal resolution wavelet transforms of the pixel-wise time signals. The result is filtered for cardiac wavelet scale then pixel-wise inverse wavelet transformed. This gives a complex-valued spatiotemporal grid of cardiac frequency angiographic phenomena. It may be rendered with a brightness-hue color model or subjected to further analysis.

The present invention provides a method of detecting microbubbles in a vessel of an affected part, comprising aggregating the microbubbles, acquiring phase-contrast magnetic resonance images and analyzing the phase-contrast magnetic resonance images. Thus, the present invention can detect or monitor the size and location of MBs in vessels of any part of body.

An MRI image processing and analysis system may identify instances of structure in MRI flow data, e.g., coherency, derive contours and/or clinical markers based on the identified structures. The system may be remotely located from one or more MRI acquisition systems, and perform: perform error detection and/or correction on MRI data sets (e.g., phase error correction, phase aliasing, signal unwrapping, and/or on other artifacts); segmentation; visualization of flow (e.g., velocity, arterial versus venous flow, shunts) superimposed on anatomical structure, quantification; verification; and/or generation of patient specific 4-D flow protocols. An asynchronous command and imaging pipeline allows remote image processing and analysis in a timely and secure manner even with complicated or large 4-D flow MRI data sets.

In one embodiment, a medical image processing apparatus includes a display and processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to (a) calculate fluid information including flow-velocity vectors based on three-dimensional image data of plural time phases, which are acquired by a phase contrast method of magnetic resonance imaging, and in which fluid flowing inside a lumen is depicted, (b) identify a branching position where a second lumen branches from a first lumen, based on change in flow volume of fluid flowing inside the first lumen along an extending direction of the first lumen, and (c) cause the display to display an analysis result including fluid information of fluid flowing inside the second lumen, based on the branching position.

A system and method for camera-based heart rate tracking. The method includes: determining bit values from a set of bitplanes in a captured image sequence that represent the HC changes; determining a facial blood flow data signal for each of a plurality of predetermined regions of interest (ROIs) of the subject captured by the images based on the HC changes; applying a band-pass filter of a passband approximating the heart rate to each of the blood flow data signals; applying a Hilbert transform to each of the blood flow data signals; adjusting the blood flow data signals from revolving phase-angles into linear phase segments; determining an instantaneous heart rate for each the blood flow data signals; applying a weighting to each of the instantaneous heart rates; and averaging the weighted instantaneous heart rates.

A computer-implemented method for personalized assessment of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) includes extracting (i) patient-specific coronary geometry data from one or more medical images of a patient; (ii) a plurality of features of a patient-specific coronary arterial tree based on the patient-specific coronary geometry data; and (iii) a plurality of ACS-related features from additional patient measurement data. A surrogate model is used to predict patient-specific hemodynamic measures of interest related to ACS based on the plurality of features of the patient-specific coronary arterial tree and the plurality of ACS-related features from the additional patient measurement data.