Patent ID: 8480582

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an ultrasonic image acquiring unit configured to acquire image data including a myocardial region of a subject; a region-of-interest setting unit configured to set a plurality of regions of interest, the plurality of regions of interest being regions of interest which periodically deform on the myocardial region included in the image data; an extraction unit configured to extract, for each of the plurality of regions of interest, a plurality of characterizing points based on the image data; a tracking unit configured to track a movement of the positions of the plurality of characterizing points over a plurality of time points; a representative value calculating unit configured to calculate, for each of the plurality of regions of interest, a representative value of the plurality of characterizing points for each of the plurality of time points; and a physical parameter calculating unit configured to calculate a specific physical parameter based on a temporal change of positional relationships between the representative values for each of the plurality of regions of interest.