%0 Journal Article
%T Myocardial strains from 3D displacement encoded magnetic resonance imaging
%A Katarina Kindberg
%A Henrik Haraldsson
%A Andreas Sigfridsson
%A Jan Engvall
%A Neil B Ingels
%A Tino Ebbers
%A Matts Karlsson
%J BMC Medical Imaging
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2342-12-9
%X We propose to estimate strain using a polynomial function which produces local models of the displacement field obtained with DENSE. Given a specific polynomial order, the model is obtained as the least squares fit of the acquired displacement field. These local models are subsequently used to produce estimates of the full strain tensor.The proposed method is evaluated on a numerical phantom as well as in vivo on a healthy human heart. The evaluation showed that the proposed method produced accurate results and showed low sensitivity to noise in the numerical phantom. The method was also demonstrated in vivo by assessment of the full strain tensor and to resolve transmural strain variations.Strain estimation within a 3D myocardial volume based on polynomial functions yields accurate and robust results when validated on an analytical model. The polynomial field is capable of resolving the measured material positions from the in vivo data, and the obtained in vivo strains values agree with previously reported myocardial strains in normal human hearts.The pumping behavior of the heart consists of complex sequences that constitute cardiac contraction and relaxation. The kinematic behavior of the heart has been analyzed extensively in order to understand the mechanisms that impair the contractile function of the heart during disease. Until recently, the only method with high enough spatial resolution of three-dimensional (3D) myocardial displacements to resolve transmural behaviors was invasive marker technology [1,2]. However, the recent development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods such as harmonic phase (HARP) analysis of tagging [3] and displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) [4], make detailed non-invasive 3D transmural kinematic analyses of human myocardium possible for clinical and research purposes [5].A previously presented polynomial method for cardiac strain quantification from surgically implanted markers and beads enables straightforwa
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2342/12/9