Towards rapid screening of tagged MR images of the heart

The final aim of this work is to perform rapid classification of tagged cardiac MR images as normal and abnormal. In the proposed technique, images are first analyzed using harmonic phase analysis and synthetic tags are computed over the myocardium. Cubic curves are fitted to these tags and curve parameters are compared at various regions of the myocardium. In this initial study, the ratios of curve parameters between normal and diseased hearts, such as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and heart with infarcted regions, are evaluated. If the initial segmentation problems are solved, this method could be a very fast and automatic screening tool for identifying diseased locations in tagged MRI.