Cardiac motion estimation in multislice computed tomography imaging using a 4D multiscale surface-volume matching process

A new generation of multislice computed tomography (MSCT) scanners, which allow a complete heart coverage, is becoming widely available. With retrospective data reconstruction, it offers new perspectives for cardiac kinetics evaluation in non invasive imaging with volume sequences of high spatial and temporal resolutions. A new method is proposed for cardiac motion extraction in MSCT. It is based on a 3D surface-volume matching process associated to a hierarchical description of shapes. Needing the segmentation of only one volume, it provides, on a whole dynamic sequence, 3D velocity fields associated to the left ventricle inner surface and an estimation of the localization of this surface. The estimated motion can be used for global and local functional parameters quantification. Results obtained on simulated and real data show the good behavior of this method