The central problem addressed by the AutoValve project is the lack of appropiate technology to exploit the potential of non-invasive investigation methods in cardiology. One of the main challenges in cardiology comes from the complex physiology of the heart its dynamics, and complicated interconnection of the anatomical structures. From a technical perspective, the mathematical formulation of an efficient valves representation was until recently and unsolved problem. Yet another provocation comes from the difficulty of design algorithms which can process huge amount of data produces by nowadays’ medical scanners. It is generally agreed that automatic generate clinical information as well as any kind of decision support system are extremely hard to get validated and accepted in the clinical practice due to the intrinsic limitations of dealing with humans and their health.
AutoValve provides automatic clinical evaluation, personalized surgical planning and predictive decision support for valve diseases patients. That is achieved by combing the advantages of newest medical scanners with robust statistical algorithms
The clinical benefits coming from the AutoValve project are already enthusiastically presented at major cardiology meetings around the world: Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, San Antonio, Texas, 2009; Society of Echocardiography, Kobe, Japan., 2008; Annual Cardiology Meeting, Cancun, Mexic, 2009. Technology and research results have been presented at international conferences and symposia, MICCAI New York 2008, MICCAI London 2009, ICCV Kyoto 2009, SPIE Orlando 2009. See the publication section for a complete list. Two patents coming from the AutoValve projects have already been published.