Shuhei Nitta1, Taichiro
Shiodera1, Tomoyuki Takeguchi1, Shigehide Kuhara2,
Kenichi Yokoyama3, Rieko Ishimura3, Toshiaki Nitatori3
1Corporate
Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Kanagawa,
Japan; 2MRI Systems Division, Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation,
Otawara, Tochigi, Japan; 3Department of Radiology, Faculty of
Medicine, Kyorin University, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
Automatic slice alignment is important in cardiac MR examinations. However, previous work has focused on only left ventricular planes. In this paper, we propose a new knowledge-based automatic slice-alignment method which can detect six left ventricular planes and four right ventricular planes simultaneously using ECG-gated axial multislice images. The results of the present study showed that the proposed method successfully detected all planes in 55 datasets from 23 healthy volunteers. The processing time was about 2.5 seconds on a 3.0-GHz CPU. The results also showed that the proposed method is beneficial to both operators and patients.