Quantitative wall motion coding in three-dimensional echocardiography

In 2D echocardiography, wall motion analysis is important in detection of heart dysfunction. The methods used suffer from being only approximations due to the complex movement of the heart. The purpose of our study is to use 3D ultrasound in order to improve the quantitative analysis of the left ventricular wall motion. The wall motion is calculated using the 3D Euclidean distance transform, resulting in a set of vectors normal to the endocardial surface. The endocardial wall velocity values are color coded and the surface is rendered creating a cincloop of the left ventricle with color intensities indicating the wall motion. The 3D motion coding technique allows for a precise quantitative analysis of the heart function. Infarcted areas are shown to be marked out with different color intensities due to the muscle activity reduction in that region. The 3D reconstruction improves the diagnosis by visualizing and localizing the whole dysfunctional region in relation to the rest of the ventricular structure.

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