Cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can detect infarct scar, a major cause of lethal arrhythmia and heart failure. Here, we describe a robust image processing pipeline developed to quantitatively analyze collagen density and features in a pig model of chronic fibrosis. Specifically, we use ex vivo diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) (0.6 × 0.6 × 1.2 mm resolution) to calculate fractional anisotropy maps in: healthy tissue, infarct core (IC) and gray zone (GZ) (i.e., a mixture of viable myocytes and collagen fibrils bordering IC and healthy zones). The 3 zones were validated using collagen-sensitive histological slides co-registered with MR images. Our results showed a significant (p < 0.05) reduction in the mean FA values of GZ (by 17%) and IC (by 44%) compared to healthy areas; however, we found that these differences do not depend on the location of occluded coronary artery (LAD vs LCX). This work validates the utility of DTI-MR imaging for fibrosis quantification, with histological validation.
CITATION STYLE
Lin, P., Martel, A., Camilleri, S., & Pop, M. (2020). Co-registered Cardiac ex vivo DT Images and Histological Images for Fibrosis Quantification. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 12009 LNCS, pp. 3–11). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39074-7_1
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