Siemens has developed a technology that allows for patient-specific modeling and quantification of the heart valves by integrating data from four-dimensional imaging modalities. Using this technology, cardiac scans from computed tomography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and rotational X-ray systems, which include critical data from a beating heart, are automatically processed into dynamic valve representations. Siemens research staff in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and Erlangen, Germany, fills the workflow gap existing in current systems, which rely on two-dimensional imaging and manual interactions producing user-dependent and potentially inaccurate results. “For the first time, our technology combines physiological models, machine learning, and large medical databases to work together,” said Razvan Ionasec, a cardiac modeling scientist at Siemens in Princeton. “This allows us to automatically extract essential information that is critical for clinical decision making.”

Patients benefit from the comprehensive measurements of their heart anatomy, blood flow analysis, and evaluation of their cardiac function, which is both accurate and non-invasive. The obtained knowledge is a prerequisite during the entire clinical workflow including diagnosis, therapy-planning and surgery, as well as patient monitoring and follow-up.

Improvement for diagnosis and therapy
With the advances of this technology, physicians will be afforded the opportunity to base their work on anatomical and functional quantification with a clearer view of the heart valves. Together with innovations in medical scanners, the technology has the potential to improve diagnosis and therapy of valvular heart disease around the world. “The new capabilities are fantastic and have tremendous implication in diagnostic and therapeutic uses,” says Mani Vannan, MD, professor of clinical medicine at Ohio State University Medical Center. “It provides accurate modeling of very complex anatomy and marks the most progress for aortic valve analysis by any imaging modality in many years.”