A comparison of cardiac motion analysis software packages: application to left ventricular deformation analysis in hypertensive patients

Background Although myocardial function is clinically assessed with global measurements (ventricular volumes, ejection fraction), recent research has shown that regional measurements, such as wall-thickening, strain, and torsion, could provide earlier sub-clinical markers to examine left ventricular (LV) dysfunction and myocardial diseases. Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance myocardial feature tracking (CMR-FT) technique is used to post-process cine CMR images to provide a quantitative assessment of LV motion deformation parameters. It derives myocardial motion deformation from image features such as myocardium-blood cavity boundary and pixel intensities, and relies only on standard cine images to extract motion deformation. The main objective of this study is to compare two current feature tracking software packages in hypertensive patients.