'Shortcardiac'- An Open-Source Framework for Fast and Standardized Assessment of Cardiac Function

Abstract

In medicine, especially in radiology, artificial intelligence has sparked a growing interest in automated systems, image analysis, and acquisition standardization. In the wake of this standardization, the research field of "radiomics" has gained importance. Using computer-aided analysis, image data and contours can be evaluated to determine numerical values for shape, size, and gray-scale texture. These can be examined in a clinical context. Especially in cardiovascular imaging, data acquisition and analysis in different cardiac and respiratory phases are of great interest. However, most research studies use parameters that have been laboriously calculated by hand. This is where "ShortCardiac" comes in, a Python "framework" with a user-friendly GUI for the quantitative determination of cardiac MR parameters. It is thus possible to use the field of quantitative MR research for one's studies even without programming knowledge using a few clicks.

Note:
Funding declaration: We would like to thank the "Elterninitiative Kinderkrebsklinik e. V." for funding this research.

Conflicts of Interest: None

Ethical Approval: The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Committee of the Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf, Germany (protocol code study 6176R). Written informed consent was obtained from the healthy volunteer to publish this paper.

Keywords: Open-source framework, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, computer-assisted methods, real-time imaging