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Sunnybrook Cardiac Data

Sunnybrook Cardiac Data (SCD), MICCAI 2009 Cardiac MR Left Ventricle Segmentation Challenge

Cine cardiac MRI with expert left ventricle contours of healthy people and patients with hypertrophy or heart failure, built for a 2009 left ventricle segmentation challenge. 45 patients from Toronto, under CC0.

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Overview

The Sunnybrook Cardiac Data (SCD) is a set of short-axis cine cardiac MRI exams with manual left ventricular contours, contributed by Perry Radau and colleagues at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. It was built for the Cardiac MR Left Ventricle Segmentation Challenge at a MICCAI 2009 workshop and is now hosted by the Cardiac Atlas Project under a CC0 public domain dedication. It is used to develop and compare left ventricle segmentation methods and to measure ejection fraction and myocardial mass.

Composition

There are 45 patients, one cine exam each, in four groups: 9 healthy, 12 with left ventricular hypertrophy, 12 with heart failure without infarction and 12 with heart failure after infarction. Heart failure groups have an ejection fraction below 40%, split by the presence of late gadolinium enhancement; the hypertrophy group has a normal ejection fraction and an indexed LV mass above 83 g/m2. The patient spreadsheet lists 32 men and 13 women aged 23 to 88. For the 2009 challenge the exams were split at random into three sets of 15 (training, testing and on-line contest). The download comes as five DICOM batches plus the contours, LV models and the patient spreadsheet, which maps the Cardiac Atlas Project ids to the original challenge ids.

Acquisition

Exams were collected in clinical routine on a 1.5 T GE Signa scanner. Short-axis SSFP cine images were acquired in breath-holds of 10 to 15 seconds with 20 phases over the cardiac cycle. Six to twelve slices cover the heart from the atrioventricular ring to the apex, with 8 mm slice thickness, an 8 mm gap, a 320 mm field of view and a 256 x 256 matrix. Images are given without preprocessing after reconstruction.

Annotations

An experienced cardiologist drew endocardial and epicardial contours of the left ventricle on all slices at end-diastole and end-systole, with papillary muscles and trabeculations counted as cavity. A second cardiologist confirmed every contour.

Known limitations

  • Single centre, single scanner and a small cohort.
  • Only the left ventricle is contoured, and only at two phases.
  • Thick slices with large gaps limit through-plane resolution.
  • Group sizes are set by design and do not reflect clinical prevalence.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 45 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 13 29%
  • Male 32 71%

Gender in SCD patient data spreadsheet (scd_patientdata.csv, CC0), counted from the Gender and Age columns

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • Cine MRI 45 100%

p. 5 in Radau et al. 2009, The MIDAS Journal (challenge website pages, MICCAI 2009 LV Segmentation Challenge)

Scanner vendor

  • GE HealthCare 45 100%

p. 5 in Radau et al. 2009, The MIDAS Journal (challenge website pages, MICCAI 2009 LV Segmentation Challenge)

Field strength

  • 1.5 T 45 100%

p. 5 in Radau et al. 2009, The MIDAS Journal (challenge website pages, MICCAI 2009 LV Segmentation Challenge)

Split

  • Training 15 33%
  • Validation 15 33%
  • Test 15 33%

p. 5 in Radau et al. 2009, The MIDAS Journal (challenge website pages, MICCAI 2009 LV Segmentation Challenge)

Age

mean 61.1 ± 15.2, median 61, range 23 to 88

0
5
10
11
20-2930-3940-4950-5960-6970-7980-89

Age in SCD patient data spreadsheet (scd_patientdata.csv, CC0), counted from the Gender and Age columns

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Heart failure 24 53%
  • Left ventricular hypertrophy 12 27%
  • Myocardial infarction 12 27%
  • Healthy control 9 20%

Pathology group table in Cardiac Atlas Project, Sunnybrook Cardiac Data page

Country

  • Canada 45 100%

From Cardiac Atlas Project, Sunnybrook Cardiac Data page

License and access

Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer

Access
Open download

Download without an account

Access page

Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal

Public domain dedication. Do anything with the data, including commercial use, without asking and without having to give credit.

Original license text Version read: 1.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

  • No
  • Share alike No
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Radau P, Lu Y, Connelly K, Paul G, Dick AJ, Wright GA. Evaluation Framework for Algorithms Segmenting Short Axis Cardiac MRI. The MIDAS Journal - Cardiac MR Left Ventricle Segmentation Challenge (2009). http://hdl.handle.net/10380/3070

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.