Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
blood pressure or flow profiles). This stage uses computational modelling software
available from an open source library (Garny et al., 2008). The outcome of the pa-
tient-specific computation is a diagnostic index or treatment strategy.
8.15 Population atlases
The Cardiac Atlas Project (www.cardiacatlas.org) is establishing a structural and
functional atlas of the heart (Fonseca et al., 2011)
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by combining cardiac mod-
elling and biophysical analysis methods with a structural database for the compre-
hensive mapping of heart structure and function. Cardiac MRI examinations provide
detailed, quantitative data on heart structure and function, and standardized proto-
cols are now routinely used in a number of studies. Comprising cardiac magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) examinations, together with derived functional analyses
and associated clinical variables, the Cardiac Atlas Project is developing a database,
which will be extendible to allow inclusion of data from a variety of imaging and
other sources. The initial goals of the project are to facilitate statistical analysis of re-
gional heart shape and wall motion characteristics, across population groups, via the
application of parametric mathematical modelling tools. Modelling tools and anal-
ysis methods developed by the University of Auckland are being combined with a
database for neuroimaging and related clinical data and probabilistic mapping in-
frastructure developed by the UCLA Center for Computational Biology (CCB). The
project is part of the National Centers for Biological Computing (NCBC) collabo-
ration program and is funded by the US National Institutes of Health. The Cardiac
Atlas Project aims to significantly improve the evaluation of cardiac performance
and disease processes, establish characteristic parameters of cardiac structure and
function on a regional basis, and enable the evaluation of clinical cases in relation
to the statistical distributions within patient subgroups.
Three main open-source software components have been developed: i) a database
with a web-interface, ii) a modelling client for 3D+time visualisation and parametric
description of shape and motion, and iii) open data formats for semantic characteri-
zation of models and annotations. The database was implemented using a three-tier
architecture utilizing MySQL, JBoss and Dcm4chee, in compliance with the DICOM
standard to provide compatibility with existing clinical networks and devices. Parts
of Dcm4chee were extended to access image specific attributes as search parameters.
To date, approximately 3000 cardiac imaging examinations have been de-identified
in a HIPAA compliant manner and uploaded to the database.
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All software components developed by the CAP are open source and are freely available under
the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 (mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.txt).
