Myocardial Motion and Strain Rate Analysis from Ultrasound Sequences

We present an optical flow-based algorithm to estimate heart wall motion from ultrasound sequences. The method exploits two ultrasound modalities, i.e., B-mode (grayscale data) and tissue Doppler (partial velocity measurements). We use a local affine velocity model to account for typical heart motions such as contraction/expansion and shear. The affine model parameters give also access to so-called strain rate parameters that describe local myocardial deformation such as wall thickening. The estimation of large motions is made possible through the use of a coarse-to-fine multi-scale strategy, which also adds robustness to the method.