Combined tag tracking and myocardium motion reconstruction from planar tagged MR image data without user-defined myocardial contours

We present a method for combined tag tracking and myocardium motion reconstruction from planar tagged MR image data that does not require user-defined myocardial contours. The method uses a cylindrical B-spline deformable model which more closely matches the shape of left ventricle than a Cartesian B-spline model. Experimental results on eight human imaging studies indicate that our method can track tag lines more accurately and faster than a previously proposed technique, which used manually determined myocardial contours. Also, circumferential strains computed by our method compare well with strains computed from expert edited tag lines using other deformation models.