Motion visualization of human left ventricle with a time-varying deformable model for cardiac diagnosis

Abstract

We present a time-varying deformable model to visualize and analyze the motion of the left ventricle from a time series of 3-D images. The model is composed of a non-rigid body that deforms around a reference shape obtained from the previous time step. At each time step, the position and orientation of the left ventricle are extracted from the feature points of images. This information gives the position and orientation of the coordinate system attached to the non-rigid body. To compute a dense non-rigid motion field over the entire endocardial wall of the left ventricle, we introduce a 3-D blob finite element and Galerkin interpolants based on 3-D Gaussian, and use a physically based finite element method and a modal analysis. Then, cinematic attributes are visualized in pseudo colors on the reconstructed surface in order to help medical doctors in their interpretation of the data. Using the presented model, we estimate clinically useful quantitative parameters such as regional wall motion and ejection fraction. Experimental results are shown in a time series of X-ray angiographic images. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.