MR fluid motion tracking of blood flow in right atrium of patient with atrial septal defect

Recently, a newly developed technique for motion estimation of magnetic resonance (MR) signals that are represented on image has been applied. This enabled MR fluid motion tracking of blood in cardiac chambers. The motion field derived from this tracking operation can be used as the blood flow information to be presented using a two dimensional velocity vector field plot. In addition to velocity reconstruction maps, we also devised vorticity flow maps on which the velocity field is superimposed onto. Based on such a framework, the degree of vortical flow is assessed for the right atrium of a patient with atrial septal defect (ASD). We are able to examine a difference in the magnitude of vortex strength pre- and post-atrial septal occlusion.