Before treating a patient with an enlarged heart, congenital heart disease, or another cardiac condition, the doctor has to know how well the patient’s heart is working. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) and computed tomography (CT) systems provide cross-sectional images of the heart’s structure, but these static images have limited diagnostic value. To fully understand the heart’s performance, doctors need to quantify several key measures, including how much blood the heart pumps each time it contracts, the diastolic and systolic volume of the left ventricle, the myocardial mass, and the ejection fraction, or the percentage of blood pumped on each contraction.
Researchers at Medviso have developed image analysis software that automatically quantifies these cardiac assessment measures. Developed in MATLAB®, the company’s software has received FDA 510(k) approval in the U.S. and CE marking in Europe, where it is certified to the ISO 13485 standard.
“MATLAB enabled our founder to develop the core image analysis algorithms,” says Helen Fransson, CEO of Medviso. “More recently, MATLAB made it possible for Medviso to incorporate those algorithms into standalone production software that we license to clinicians. We have streamlined regulatory approval procedures with MATLAB by automatically generating documentation and ensuring that all requirements are tested every release, as required for FDA 510(k) approval.”