Patients suffering from a heart valve deficiency are often treated by replacing the valve with an artificial or biological implant. In case of biological implants, the use of porcine heart valves is common. Quality assessment and inspection methods are mandatory to supply the patients (and also medical research) with only the best such xenograft implants thus reducing the number of follow-up surgeries to replace worn-up valves. We describe an approach for automatic in-vitro evaluation of prosthetic heart valves in an artificial circulation system. We show how to measure the orifice area during a heart cycle to obtain an orifice curve. Different quality parameters are then estimated on such curves.

Date Published: 9 March 2007
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 6512, Medical Imaging 2007: Image Processing, 65122Q (9 March 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.710629

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6512:
Medical Imaging 2007: Image Processing
Josien P. W. Pluim; Joseph M. Reinhardt, Editor(s)