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. 2022 Sep 15;15(1):299.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-022-06173-2.

Comparative study of left atrium epicardial fat tissue pattern using persistent homology approach

Deepa Deepa  1 , Yashbir Singh  2   3 , Wathiq Mansoor  4 , Weichih Hu  1 , Rahul Paul  5 , Gunnar E Carlsson  6
Affiliations

Comparative study of left atrium epicardial fat tissue pattern using persistent homology approach

Deepa Deepa et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: Atrial Fibrillation (A-fib) is an abnormal heartbeat condition in which the heart races and beats in an uncontrollable way. It is observed that the presence of increased epicardial fat/fatty tissue in the atrium can lead to A-fib. Persistent homology using topological features can be used to recapitulate enormous amounts of spatially complicated medical data into a visual code to identify a specific pattern of epicardial fat tissue with non-fat tissue. Our aim is to evaluate the topological pattern of left atrium epicardial fat tissue with non-fat tissue.

Results: A topological data analysis approach was acquired to study the imaging pattern between the left atrium epicardial fat tissue and non-fat tissue patches. The patches of eight patients from CT images of the left atrium heart were used and categorized into "left atrium epicardial fat tissue" and "non-fat tissue" groups. The features that distinguish the "epicardial fat tissue" and "non-fat tissue" groups are extracted using persistent homology (PH). Our result reveals that our proposed research can discriminate between left atrium epicardial fat tissue and non-fat tissue. Specifically, the range of Betti numbers in the epicardial tissue is smaller (0-30) than the non-fat tissue (0-100), indicating that non-fat tissue has good topology.

Keywords: Atrial fibrillation; Barcode; Persistent homology; Pixel value masking; Topology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
(i) Patch representation of epicardial fat tissue. (ii) Patch representation of Non-fat tissue
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Topological data analysis workflow with imaging signal input
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
(i) PH of epicardial fat tissue. (ii) PH of Non-fat tissue.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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