Reconstruction of sequential cardiac in-plane displacement patterns on the chest wall by laser speckle interferometry

Time-average speckle interferometry has been applied to obtain displacement patterns on the chest wall produced by cardiac action, in the absence of breathing, during various phases of the cardiac cycle. This has been achieved by an electronic shutter, controlled by the electrocardiogram of the subject. The recorded holographic plates processed under identical conditions are scanned by the pointwise method to obtain the absolute displacements at various locations corresponding to the activities of the various cardiac chambers and valves. These data are transformed to a 40*30 matrix by an interpolation method and, from this, three-dimensional displacement plots are reconstructed by an IBM PC/AT computer. These patterns show the displacements over the entire cardiac area corresponding to the activities of various regions during the cardiac cycle. The apex and aortic valve areas show the maximum displacements during the systolic phase. During the diastolic phase the activities over the low-pressure atrial regions are also observed. The results obtained outline the functional details of the normal heart and the activities over various areas are in agreement with those obtained by other noncontact techniques.