Abstract
Atrial myofiber orientation is complex and has multiple discrete layers and bundles. A novel robust semi-automatic method to incorporate atrial anisotropy and heterogeneities into patient-specific models is introduced. The user needs to provide 22 distinct seed-points from which a network of auxiliary lines is constructed. These are used to define fiber orientation and myocardial bundles. The method was applied to 14 patient-specific volumetric models derived from CT, MRI and photographic data. Initial electrophysiological simulations show a significant influence of anisotropy and heterogeneity on the excitation pattern and P-wave duration (20.7% shortening). Fiber modeling results show good overall correspondence with anatomical data. Minor modeling errors are observed if more than four pulmonary veins exist in the model. The method is an important step towards creating realistic patient-specific atrial models for clinical applications.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Plank, G., Prassl, A.J., Wang, J.I., Seemann, G., Scherr, D., Sanchez-Quintana, D., Calkins, H., Trayanova, N.A.: Atrial fibrosis promotes the transistion of pulmonary vein ectopy into reentrant arrhathmias. In: Heart Rhythm (2008)
Vigmond, E.J., Ruckdeschel, R., Trayanova, N.: Reentry in a morphologically realistic atrial model. Cardiovasc Electrophysiol. 12, 1046–1054 (2001)
Zemlin, C., Herzel, H., Ho, S., Panfilov, A.: A realistic and efficient model of excitation propagation in the human atria. In: Computer Simulation and Experimental Assessment of Cardiac Electrophysiology, Futura, pp. 29–34 (2001)
Jacquemet, V.: A biophysical model of atrial fibrillation and electrograms: formulation, validation and applications. PhD thesis (2004)
Tobón, C., Ruiz, C., Heidenreich, E., Hornero, F., Sáiz, J.: Effect of the ectopic beats location on vulnerability to reentries in a three-dimensional realistic model of human atria. Computers in Cardiology 36, 449–452 (2009)
Seemann, G., Höper, C., Sachse, F.B., Dössel, O., Holden, A.V., Zhang, H.: Heterogeneous three-dimensional anatomical and electrophysiological model of human atria. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 364, 1465–1481 (2006)
Peyrat, J.-M., Sermesant, M., Pennec, X., Delingette, H., Xu, C., McVeigh, E.R., Ayache, N.: A computational framework for the statistical analysis of cardiac diffusion tensors: application to a small database of canine hearts. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 26, 1500–1514 (2007)
Hermosillo, B.D.F.: Semi-automatic enhancement of atrial models to include atrial architecture and patient specific data: For biophysical simulations. Computers in Cardiology 35, 633–636 (2008)
Krueger, M.W., Weber, F.M., Seemann, G., Dössel, O.: Semi-automatic segmentation of sinus node, bachmann’s bundle and terminal crest for patient specific atrial models. In: World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. IFMBE Proceedings, vol. 25/4, pp. 673–676. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Krueger, M.W., Rhode, K., Weber, F.M., Keller, D.U.J., Caulfield, D., Seemann, G., Knowles, B.R., Razavi, R., Dössel, O.: Patient-specific volumetric atrial models with electrophysiological components: A comparison of simulations and measurements. Biomedizinische Technik / Biomedical Engineering 55(s1), 54–57 (2010)
Feng, J., Yue, L., Wang, Z., Nattel, S.: Ionic mechanisms of regional action potential heterogeneity in the canine right atrium. Circ. Res. 83, 541–551 (1998)
Papez, J.W.: Heart musculature of the atria. Am. J. Anatomy 27, 255–286 (1920)
Sanchez-Quintana, D., Anderson, R., Cabrera, J., Climent, V., Martin, R., Farre, J., Ho, S.: The terminal crest: morphological features relevant to electrophysiology. Heart (British Cardiac Society) 88, 406–411 (2002)
Ho, S., Sanchez-Quintana, D.: The importance of atrial structure and fibers. Clinical Anatomy (New York, N.Y.) 22, 52–63 (2009)
Ecabert, O., Peters, J., Schramm, H., Lorenz, C., von Berg, J., Walker, M., Vembar, M., Olszewski, M., Subramanyan, K., Lavi, G., Weese, J.: Automatic model-based segmentation of the heart in ct images. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 27, 1189–1201 (2008)
Weese, J., Peters, J., Meyer, C., Wächter, I., Kneser, R., Lehmann, H., Ecabert, O., Barschdorf, H., Hanna, R., Weber, F.M., Dössel, O., Lorenz, C.: The generation of patient-specific heart models for diagnosis and interventions. In: Camara, O., Pop, M., Rhode, K., Sermesant, M., Smith, N., Young, A. (eds.) STACOM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6364, pp. 25–35. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Platonov, P.G., Ivanov, V., Ho, S.Y., Mitrofanova, L.: Left atrial posterior wall thickness in patients with and without atrial fibrillation: data from 298 consecutive autopsies. Cardiovasc Electrophysiol. 19, 689–692 (2008)
Baerentzen, J.: On the implementation of fast marching methods for 3D lattices. Technical report (2001)
Wan, S.Y., Higgins, W.E.: Symmetric region growing. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 12, 1007–1015 (2003)
Courtemanche, M., Ramirez, R.J., Nattel, S.: Ionic mechanisms underlying human atrial action potential properties: Insights from a mathematical model. Am. J. Physiol. 275, H301–H321 (1998)
Seemann, G., Sachse, F.B., Karl, M., Weiss, D.L., Heuveline, V., Dössel, O.: Framework for modular, flexible and efficient solving the cardiac bidomain equation using petsc. Progr. Industr. Math. 15, 363–369 (2010)
Harrild, D.M., Henriquez, C.S.: A computer model of normal conduction in the human atria. Circ. Res. 87, 25 (2000)
Sachse, F., Frech, R., Werner, C., Dössel, O.: A model based approach to assignment of myocardial fibre orientation. In: Proceedings of Computers in Cardiology, Hannover, pp. 145–148 (1999)
Toussaint, N., Sermesant, M., Stoeck, C.T., Kozerke, S., Batchelor, P.G.: In vivo human 3D cardiac fibre architecture: Reconstruction using curvilinear interpolation of diffusion tensor images. In: Jiang, T., Navab, N., Pluim, J.P.W., Viergever, M.A. (eds.) MICCAI 2010. LNCS, vol. 6361, pp. 418–425. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Zhao, J., Trew, M.L., Legrice, I.J., Smaill, B.H., Pullan, A.J.: A tissue-specific model of reentry in the right atrial appendage. Cardiovasc Electrophysiol. 20, 675–684 (2009)
Campos, F.O., Wiener, T., Prassl, A.J., Ahammer, H., Plank, G., Weber Dos Santos, R., Sanchez-Quintana, D., Hofer, E.: A 2D-computer model of atrial tissue based on histographs describes the electro-anatomical impact of microstructure on endocardiac potentials and electric near-fields. In: Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBC Society, vol. 1, pp. 2541–2544 (2010)
Marom, E., Herndon, J., Kim, Y., McAdams, H.: Variations in pulmonary venous drainage to the left atrium: implications for radiofrequency ablation. Radiology 230, 824–829 (2004)
Boineau, J.P., Canavan, T.E., Schuessler, R.B., Cain, M.E., Corr, P.B., Cox, J.L.: Demonstration of a widely distributed atrial pacemaker complex in the human heart. Circ. 77, 1221–1237 (1988)
De Ponti, R., Ho, S.Y., Salerno-Uriarte, J.A., Tritto, M., Spadacini, G.: Electroanatomic analysis of sinus impulse propagation in normal human atria. Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology 13, 1–10 (2002)
Wang, L., Zhang, H., Wong, K.C.L., Liu, H., Shi, P.: Noninvasive imaging of electrophysiological substrates in post myocardial infarction. In: Yang, G.-Z., Hawkes, D., Rueckert, D., Noble, A., Taylor, C. (eds.) MICCAI 2009. LNCS, vol. 5762, pp. 732–740. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Hansson, A., Holm, M., Blomstrom, P., Johansson, R., Luhrs, C., Brandt, J., Olsson, S.: Right atrial free wall conduction velocity and degree of anisotropy in patients with stable sinus rhythm studied during open heart surgery. Eur. Heart. J. 19, 293–300 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Krueger, M.W. et al. (2011). Modeling Atrial Fiber Orientation in Patient-Specific Geometries: A Semi-automatic Rule-Based Approach. In: Metaxas, D.N., Axel, L. (eds) Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart. FIMH 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6666. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21028-0_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21028-0_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-21027-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-21028-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)