Statistical Atlas of Human Cardiac Fibers: Comparison with Abnormal Hearts

Abstract. Criteria of normality of the cardiac fibers are important in cardiomyopathies. In this paper, we investigate the differences in the cardiac fiber structures between 10 hearts classified as healthy and 6 hearts classified as abnormal, and determine if properties of the cardiac fiber structures can be discriminants for abnormality. We compare the variability of the fiber directions from abnormal hearts to an atlas of healthy hearts. The human atlas of the cardiac fiber structures is built with an automated framework based on symmetric Log-domain diffeomorphic demons. We study the angular variability of the different fiber structures. Our preliminary results might suggest that a higher variability of the fiber structure directions could possibly characterize abnormality of a heart.