[PhD thesis] Image based analysis and modeling of the detailed cardiac ventricular anatomy

Author: Bruno Paun

Supervisor: Bart Bijnens, Constantine Butakoff

The role of trabeculations and their normal morphological expression in the human heart is still unclear. Clinical studies have shown that excessive trabeculation can cause heart failure due to diastolic and systolic dysfunction, thromboembolism and arrhythmias. Quantifying and modeling those structures could provide us insights into their function, their influence on cardiac performance and also their connection with cardiomyopathies. The contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows: 1) a simplified model of the trabeculated left ventricle (LV) to study the impact of trabeculations on stroke volume, strain and pump capacity of the LVs of different geometries, 2) a simple as well as a more elaborate method for geometry independent parametrization of the detailed cardiac left and right ventricular anatomy, 3) a framework for visualization and statistical analysis of the trabeculations, and 4) a longitudinal analysis of the cardiac trabeculations in a mouse embryo at different gestational stages.

Additional material:

• Open access version available at TDX repository