Left ventricular myocardial motion tracking in cardiac cine magnetic resonance images based on a biomechanical model.

BACKGROUND: Cardiac cine magnetic resonance (CCMR) imaging plays an important role in the clinical cardiovascular disease (CVD) examination and evaluation.

OBJECTIVE: To accurately reconstruct the displacement field and describe the motion of the left ventricular myocardium (LVM), this study proposes and tests a new approach for tracking myocardial motion of the left ventricle based on a biomechanical model.

METHODS: CCMR imaging data acquired from 103 patients are enrolled, including two simulated and 101 clinical data. A non-rigid image registration method with a combination of a thin-plate spline function and random sample consensus is used to recover the observed displacement field of LVM. Next, a biomechanical model and a material matrix are introduced to solve the dense displacement field of LVM using a finite element framework. Then, the tracking precision and error of results for the two groups are analyzed.

RESULTS: Displacement results of the simulated data show correlation coefficient≥0.876 and mean square error≤0.159, while displacement results of the clinical data show Dice≥0.97 and mean contour distance≤0.464. Additionally, the strain results show correlation coefficient≥0.717.

CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the proposed new method enables to accurately track the motion of the LVM and evaluate strain, which has clinical auxiliary value in the diagnosis of CVD.