Improved Myocardial Motion Estimation Combining Tissue Doppler and B-Mode Echocardiographic Images

• Published in: IEEE transactions on medical imaging Vol. 33; no. 11; pp. 2098 - 2106
• Main Authors: Porras, A. R., Alessandrini, M., De Craene, M., Duchateau, N., Sitges, M., Bijnens, B. H., Delingette, H., Sermesant, M., D'hooge, J., Frangi, A. F., Piella, G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.11.2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Accuracy; Adult; Computer Science; Doppler; Doppler effect; Echocardiography; Echocardiography, Doppler - methods; Female; free form deformation (FFD); Heart - physiology; Heart rate; Heart Ventricles - anatomy & histology; Heart Ventricles - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Image Processing; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Image registration; Imaging; Male; Medical Imaging; Motion estimation; Motion simulation; Movement - physiology; Multi-modal integration; Myocardium; Reproducibility of Results; Similarity; Splines (mathematics); temporal diffeomorphic free form deformation (TDFFD); Tissue Doppler; Transducers; Transforms; ultrasound (US); Velocity measurement; Ventricular Function - physiology; Young Adult; motion estimation; Echocardiography; free form deformation (FFD); image registration
• ISSN: 0278-0062; 1558-254X
• DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2014.2331392

We propose a technique for myocardial motion estimation based on image registration using both B-mode echocardiographic images and tissue Doppler sequences acquired interleaved. The velocity field is modeled continuously using B-splines and the spatiotemporal transform is constrained to be diffeomorphic. Images before scan conversion are used to improve the accuracy of the estimation. The similarity measure includes a model of the speckle pattern distribution of B-mode images. It also penalizes the disagreement between tissue Doppler velocities and the estimated velocity field. Registration accuracy is evaluated and compared to other alternatives using a realistic synthetic dataset, obtaining mean displacement errors of about 1 mm. Finally, the method is demonstrated on data acquired from six volunteers, both at rest and during exercise. Robustness is tested against low image quality and fast heart rates during exercise. Results show that our method provides a robust motion estimate in these situations.