SPM to the heart: Mapping of 4D continuous velocities for motion abnormality quantification

This paper proposes to apply parallel transport and statistical atlas techniques to quantify 4D myocardial motion abnormalities. We take advantage of our previous work on cardiac motion, which provided a continuous spatiotemporal representation of velocities, to interpolate and reorient cardiac motion fields to an unbiased reference space. Abnormal motion is quantified using SPM analysis on the velocity fields, which includes a correction based on random field theory to compensate for the spatial smoothness of the velocity fields. This paper first introduces the imaging pipeline for constructing a continuous 4D velocity atlas. This atlas is then applied to quantify abnormal motion patterns in heart failure patients.