Postprocessing Tool for 3D Strain Quantification from 3D Tagging Data

Introduction: 2D Tagging acquisition of the orbit during eye movement have proven to give new inside into the mechanical properties of orbital tissues,[1] and to be a valuable tool for investigating diseases etiologies.[2] 3D tagging acquisition have been shown to be feasible in a scantime short enough to enable motion reproducibility.[3] Nevertheless, the missing of an appropriate postprocessing tool impeached the extraction of quantitative information from 3D tagging data of the orbit. To obtain quantitative information out of tagging data, tissue landmarks have to be tracked over the acquired time frames. Image noise and movement artifacts can disrupt the stability of the tracking procedure. Up to now only model-based multi-2D postprocessing methods allowed to obtain 3D quantitative information.[4,5] The model used may not apply in pathological cases. We present here a model-free method enabling to quantify out of 3D tagging data the inhomogeneous deformation along extraocular muscles.