Animated 3D-Model of the Human Heart Based on Echocardiograms

Abstract

Two-dimensional echocardiography has become an indispensable tool of the modern cardiologist. It is noninvasive and delivers cross sections of the heart throughout the cardiac cycle, displaying the movement of the valves and cardiac walls. This technique however also has a considerable disadvantage: only one crossection of the heart is taken and monitored at a time. If another section of the heart is to be investigated, the position of the scanner has to be changed and a new part of the heart is scanned. How does it relate to the former section? Only the experience of many previous scans permits the cardiologist to reconstruct a mental image of the complex and ever moving geometry of the heart and to detect anomalities. The question now arises how a computer can aid this mental process. The paper therefore deals with the attempt of the animated, threedimensional reconstruction of the moving heart on the basis of several two-dimensional echocardiographic scans. Unlike other authors [1,2,3] here it is not attempted to model the outer surface of the heart but to join several sections in the proper geometrical relation and leaving the outer contour invisible.