FRIDAY, Feb. 20, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Rapid and dynamic visualization of valves and myocardium is possible using volume rendering of three-dimensional (3D) cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and four-dimensional (4D) cine and flow images in pediatric patients, according to a study published online Feb. 12 in Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging.
Julia Iacovella, from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a retrospective study to develop a volume rendering method to visualize myocardial structures and blood flow using 3D, 4D cine, and 4D flow cardiac MRI. The custom transfer functions for volume rendering and novel dense streamline-based 4D flow visualizations were developed and implemented in the 3D Slicer image computing platform, and were then applied to the cardiac MRI studies of four pediatric patients with congenital heart disease.
The researchers demonstrated applications in four patients, which included integration into interventional planning workflows. Rapid and dynamic 3D and 4D visualization of the myocardium and valves was enabled by cardiac MRI in less than 1 second; image refinement was completed in less than three minutes. The simultaneous depiction of valve dynamics, regurgitation, and stenosis was allowed by integration of tissue rendering with 4D flow visualization.
"Volume rendering is fast -- generating visualizations nearly instantaneously -- which is essential for 4D moving images where there is simply too much information to process using traditional manual tracing methods," coauthor Matthew A. Jolley, M.D., also from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a statement.