RadioGraphics, Vol 17, 1269-1275, Copyright © 1997 by Radiological Society of North America
Computerized radiographic assessment of pulmonary blood flow in patients with and those without mitral stenosis
S Kido, J Arisawa, J Ikezoe, H Nakamura and C Kuroda
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, Japan.
The authors investigated whether a computerized analysis system can be used
with chest radiography for estimating the redistribution of pulmonary blood
flow in patients with and those without mitral stenosis (MS). Their system
uses four-directional Laplacian-Gaussian filtering and binarization. As a
physical measure, the radiographic index, which reflects the area of
opacity in selected regions of interest (ROIs), was used. Fifteen men with
MS and 15 men without MS were included in the study. ROIs were selected in
the right upper and lower lung zones on radiographs, and the images were
processed with the system. The radiographic indexes were determined in each
ROI. As a measure of pulmonary blood flow redistribution, the
upper-to-lower lung zone radiographic index ratio (U/L) was calculated. The
U/L values correlated with pulmonary capillary wedge pressure values (r =
.405, P = .025). The mean U/L value of the MS group was significantly
higher than that of the non-MS group (1.16 +/- 0.14 vs 1.05 +/- 0.09,
respectively; P = .016). These preliminary results indicate that this
system can be used for quantitative estimation of the redistribution of
pulmonary blood flow.
