Towards Fully Automated Segmentation of Rat Cardiac MRI by Leveraging Deep Learning Frameworks

Automated segmentation of human cardiac magnetic resonance datasets has been steadily improving during recent years. However, these methods are not directly applicable in preclinical context due to limited datasets and lower image resolution. Successful application of deep architectures for rat cardiac segmentation, although of critical importance for preclinical evaluation of cardiac function, has to our knowledge not yet been reported. We developed segmentation models that expand on the standard U-Net architecture and evaluated separate models for systole and diastole phases, 2MSA, and one model for all timepoints, 1MSA. Furthermore, we calibrated model outputs using a Gaussian Process (GP)-based prior to improve phase selection. Resulting models approach human performance in terms of left ventricular segmentation quality and ejection fraction (EF) estimation in both 1MSA and 2MSA settings (Sorensen-Dice score 0.91 +/- 0.072 and 0.93 +/- 0.032, respectively). 2MSA achieved a mean absolute difference between estimated and reference EF of 3.5 +/- 2.5 %, while 1MSA resulted in 4.1 +/- 3.0 %. Applying Gaussian Processes to 1MSA allows to automate the selection of systole and diastole phases. Combined with a novel cardiac phase selection strategy, our work presents an important first step towards a fully automated segmentation pipeline in the context of rat cardiac analysis.