Joint Strain Analysis in cardia MRI

Abstract

Cardiac wall motion analysis is a widely used technique for identifying many different types of cardiovascular diseases. Regional abnormalities in myocardial function can be detected with myocardial strain measurements derived from Tagged CMR/CINE CMR data and of myocardial infarctions can be detected with LGE (Late Gadolinium Enhanced) CMR. However, inherent issues with MRI imaging prevent having accurate estimation of cardiac motion or infarctions.Thus, this thesis proposes a novel optical flow motion estimation method that uses both tagged and cine CMR data simultaneously to provide more accurate motion estimation over the full cardiac cycle. Further, this thesis attempts to identify correlation between myocardial infarction percentage/location and myocardial strain measures. By adding the strain measures calculated throughout the full cardiac cycle, we present an extended correlation analysis between strain measures and infarct percentage.