MV-RAN: Multiview recurrent aggregation network for echocardiographic sequences segmentation and full cardiac cycle analysis.

Multiview based learning has generally returned dividends in performance because additional information can be extracted for the representation of the diversity of different views. The advantage of multiview based learning fits the purpose of segmenting cardiac anatomy from multiview echocardiography, which is a non-invasive, low-cost and low-risk imaging modality. Nevertheless, it is still challenging because of limited training data, a poor signal-to-noise ratio of the echocardiographic data, and large variances across views for a joint learning. In addition, for a better interpretation of pathophysiological processes, clinical decision-making and prognosis, such cardiac anatomy segmentation and quantitative analysis of various clinical indices should ideally be performed for the data covering the full cardiac cycle. To tackle these challenges, a multiview recurrent aggregation network (MV-RAN) has been developed for the echocardiographic sequences segmentation with the full cardiac cycle analysis. Experiments have been carried out on multicentre and multi-scanner clinical studies consisting of spatio-temporal (2D + t) datasets. Compared to other state-of-the-art deep learning based methods, the MV-RAN method has achieved significantly superior results (0.92 ± 0.04 Dice scores) for the segmentation of the left ventricle on the independent testing datasets. For the estimation of clinical indices, our MV-RAN method has also demonstrated great promise and will undoubtedly propel forward the understanding of pathophysiological processes, computer-aided diagnosis and personalised prognosis using echocardiography.