Measurement of Left Ventricular Myocardium Wall Instantaneous Motions with Echocardiographic Sequence Images

Background & Aims: One of the important aims of quantitative cardiac image processing is the clarification of myocardial motions in order to derive biomechanical behavior of the heart in the disease condition. In this study we presented a computerized analysis method for detecting the instantaneous myocardial changes by using 2D echocardiography images. Methods: The analysis was performed on the myocardial septum wall of 10 healthy participants in longitudinal and short axis views. Myocardial muscle's vertical and horizontal displacements in the basal and apex segments were also estimated. In order to detemin the validity of the planned program, manual measurements were performed too and the results of automatic and manual methods were compared. Pearson's test used to find out the correlation between manual and automatic methods and the linear correlation function between these two methods was extracted by the confidence level of 95%. Results: There was significant correlation between the displacements of the base and apex segments of the interventricular septum acquired using block matching and manual methods (R2= 0.91, p<0.05). In studying the difference between the two methods based on their average, significant correlation between the manual and block maching methods was observed. Maximum displacement of the interventricular septum wall measured by block matching algorithm and manual method showed no significant difference. Conclusion: Since the proposed approach based on block matching is capable of assessing the instantaneous changes of regional myocardial wall in longitudinal and short axes views of sequential B-mode images, it has the potential to be used in clinical practice