Analysis of myocardial motion and strain patterns using a cylindrical B-spline transformation model

Abstract

We present a novel method for tracking the motion of the myocardium in tagged magnetic resonance (MR) images of the heart using a nonrigid registration algorithm based on a cylindrical free-form deformation (FFD) model and the optimization of a cost function based on normalized mutual information (NMI). The new aspect of our work is that we use a FFD defined in a cylindrical rather than a Cartesian coordinate system. This models more closely the geometry and motion of the left ventricle (LV). Validation results using a cardiac motion simulator and tagged MR data from 6 normal volunteers are also presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.