Cardiac Atlas Project CHD Atlas

The Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) Atlas is the congenital branch of the Cardiac Atlas Project. UC San Diego runs the database and collects de-identified cardiac MRI, physiological clinical data and computational heart models from children and adults with congenital heart defects. Contributing centres include Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, UC San Diego Medical Center and Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland. The goal is a reference population against which the ventricular shape and function of a single patient can be compared statistically, to quantify remodelling and guide management.

Composition

The live summary on the home page listed 1,183 patients with 1,273 study image sets and 2,166 clinical exam sets when read on 2026-10-09. Ages range from 0 to 86 years with a mean of 16. The largest groups are tetralogy of Fallot (267 patients), normal CMR (234), coarctation of the aorta (33) and hypoplastic left heart syndrome (33), while 287 patients have no diagnosis recorded. Named sub-collections include a tetralogy of Fallot atlas of 84 repaired patients from Rady Children's Hospital and the Center for Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Auckland, and a pediatric atlas of 101 healthy children with 65 tetralogy of Fallot validation cases.

Acquisition

For the tetralogy of Fallot atlas, two-dimensional SSFP cine images in short- and long-axis views were acquired at 1.5 T on Siemens Avanto and GE Discovery scanners, together with phase-contrast flow images. The 2018 paper describes a single ventricle atlas of 42 cases from the database, scanned on a Siemens 1.5 T Avanto. Acquisition details for the whole database are not published. Images are stored as DICOM.

Annotations

The database holds biventricular shape models fitted to the images and clinical tables such as ventricular volumes, ejection fractions, ECG intervals and catheter pressures. In the tetralogy of Fallot atlas, end-diastolic and end-systolic contours were drawn manually on short- and long-axis cine slices.

Known limitations

• The summary counts are a live database view and change as data are added.
• 287 patients have no diagnosis listed, and the condition counts cover only the five largest groups.
• No breakdown by sex, site, scanner or field strength is published for the whole database.
• Access needs an institutional data use agreement with UC San Diego, with extra steps for institutions outside the United States. The agreement text is not published.