Reproducible, accurate and rapid ventricular assessment
LVtools is a CMRtools plug-in for left ventricular CMR image assessment. It allows the calculation of key cardiac indices including ejection fraction, cardiac mass and volume. LVtools is designed to provide rapid, accurate and reproducible analysis by following an intuitive step-by-step workflow that guides the user through the different analysis tasks required. User interaction is permitted at all stages of the analysis workflow to ensure the accuracy of the results and to deal with cases with complex cardiac morphology or poor image quality.
In LVtools, the motion of the valves is taken into account for calculating the volume and mass of the ventricle. The position and orientation of the valves are identified at end-diastole and end-systole, and then temporally interpolated to exclude regions that belong to the left atrium. The resulting calculation of the cardiac indices does not make any assumptions concerning the geometry of the ventricle.
LVtools is a part of the CMRtools suite of plug-ins for the analysis and visualisation of CMR images. Other plug-ins for CMRtools include ModellingTools for constructing detailed cardiovascular models, PerfusionTools for first-pass myocardial perfusion quantification, Thalassaemia-Tools for T2* assessment for the heart and liver, and 3Dtools for real-time 3D image visualisation. The software is designed to run on standard PCs including laptops running Microsoft Windows.
The current version of CMRtools and its plug-ins
ThalassaemiaTools, VentricularTools, LVtools, LateEnhancementTools,
3Dtools and PerfusionTools is intended for use as an investigational
device for cardiac research only and must not be used for clinical
diagnosis in the United States. A 510(k) application is being made to
the FDA for CMRtools and its plug-ins VentricularTools and
ThalassaemiaTools.
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