Detection of Trabeculae and Papillary Muscles in Cardiac MR Images

With the improvement of the quality of MR imagery, more and more details become visible. Only 5-10 years ago cardiac images of the heart were still so unsharp that finer details of the heart like the papillary muscles and the trabeculae were hardly visible and it was simply impossible to determine their outlines with any measure of accuracy. With the improved image quality it becomes feasible to extract information about these small structures. Studying the operation of these tiny muscles can be very useful for further analysis of the heart function and diagnosis of heart diseases. Until now very little literature existed on the study of these structures using cardiac MR, so with this publication we are riding the front of the wave. We conducted two pilot studies to investigate the feasibility of detection of papillary muscles in the left ventricular blood volume and to obtain a measure of the trabeculation of the right ventricle. The latter was also investigated as a diagnostic criterion for Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD).