Automatic segmentation of ablation lesions and termination of the image acquisition/analysis process

Background Visualization of radiofrequency ablation lesions during cardiac electrophysiology procedures would help ensuring their contiguity and inclusiveness, which are essential for the procedures’ long-term success. The usefulness of dynamic contrast enhancement (DynCE) and cumulative characteristics for ablation lesion visualization has been already demonstrated (1). However, planning of the image acquisition process and interpretation of the resulting images may pose a challenge for electrophysiologists who don’t interpret MRI routinely. We describe an algorithm allowing automatic discrimination between ablation lesions and surrounding normal tissue during DynCE scans as well automatic termination of the image acquisition and analysis processes as soon as the desired lesion visibility level has been achieved.