Patent ID: 7421101
Filing Date: 2008-09-02
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A method for tracking local deformable cardiac motion of a myocardial wall of a left ventricle (LV), the left ventricle being viewed in an image sequence, the method comprises the steps of: sampling points on a LV contour in consecutive image frames to identify LV image regions and background image regions; estimating motion of at least one of the identified background image regions to identify those background image regions affected by global motion; measuring the global motion in the identified background regions by measuring rotation and translation of the identified background regions; combining motion from multiple background image regions to measure the global motion in the consecutive image frames; compensating for the measured global motion in the LV image regions to measure local deformable motion of the myocardial wall of the LV by calculating a period of cardiac motion for the left ventricle, the period being calculated by measuring the area of the left ventricle in each frame using control points identified on the left ventricle wall and identifying changes in the size of the left ventricle over the period; matching the LV image regions in the consecutive image frames to obtain global translation and rotation of the LV image region; and independently tracking each control point in the image sequence to determine the local deformable motion of the LV.