ABSTRACT Techniques for automatic segmentation of the heart chambers have been proposed.

An important application of these methods is the characterization of the heart function. Heart models are generally used for identifying great vessels and some veins connected to heart chamber. It is, for instance, important to extract the left atrium and the proximal part of the pulmonary veins to support guidance of ablation procedures for atrial brillation treatment. For cardiac resynchronization therapy, a heart model including the coronary sinus is needed. In this project a heart model comprising the four heart chambers and attached great vessels is used. By assigning discrete curvelet transformations to the heart chambers and to short tubular segments building the great vessels, variable sizes of the heart chambers and bending of the vessels can be described in a consistent way. This adaptation engine matches the heart model automatically to cardiac CT images in a multi-stage process. First, the heart is detected using a Generalized Hough Transformation. Subsequently, the heart chambers are adapted. In adapted image preprocessing is applied and the image can be enhanced by using adaptive histogram equalization, then by using segmentation techniques, discrete curvelet transformations the chambers of heart can be extracted. In the nal stage, segments of the large vascular structures are successively activated and adapted. By using proposed methods chambers of the heart can be extracted clearly with high level accuracy and will be useful for medical diagnosis.