3-D analysis of left ventricle dynamics

Describes a method which quantifies 3D LV motion by means of the optical flow technique extended to the voxel space. Motion is represented by a 3D velocity vector field which is computed for each voxel on the series of cardiac volumes. The algorithm developed has two steps: (1) the spatial and temporal derivatives of the 3D image brightness are computed, after the cardiac volumes have been convolved with a symmetrical Gaussian function filter; (2) The optical flow is computed as the solution to a linear algebraic system of equations whose coefficients are determined by the derivatives that were computed in (1). The velocity vector field estimated from a sequence of 3D images has been computed for normal and infarcted hearts obtained at InCor´s Nuclear Medicine Department.<>