Parametric analysis of main motion: application to the assessment of left ventricular wall motion by MR imaging

A parametric method - parametric analysis of main motion (PAMM) is proposed to describe in one synthetic image the regional wall motion of the left ventricle, from a set of MR contraction images, acquired for one cardiac cycle. PAAM works on the time signal-intensity curves associated to each pixel, and computes amplitudes and transition times between the high and the low grey scale levels. Although the method is nonlinear, an adapted fast algorithm was developed to estimate these four parameters. A combined parametric image was interpreted by clinicians. Preliminary results show PAMM to be an interesting method in the diagnostic evaluation of regional ventricular wall motion.