Elastic Image Registration Versus Speckle Tracking for 2-D Myocardial Motion Estimation: A Direct Comparison In Vivo

Although the two dimensional Speckle Tracking Echocardiography has gained a strong position among medical diagnostic techniques in cardiology, it still requires further developments to improve its repeatability and reliability. Few works have attempted to incorporate the left ventricle segmentation results in the process of displacements and strain estimation to improve its performance. We proposed the use of mask information as an additional penalty in the elastic image registration based displacements estimation. This approach was studied using a short axis view synthetic echocardiographic data, segmented using an active contour method. The obtained masks were distorted to a different degree, using different methods to assess the influence of the segmentation quality on the displacements and strain estimation process. The results of displacements and circumferential strain estimations show, that even though the method is dependent on the mask quality, the potential loss in accuracy due to the poor segmentation quality is much lower than the potential accuracy gain in cases where the segmentation performs well.

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Performance of elastic image registration against speckle tracking for 2D cardiac motion and strain estimation

2011 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium ◽

10.1109/ultsym.2011.0228 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Brecht Heyde ◽

Ruta Jasaityte ◽

Stefaan Bouchez ◽

Michael Vandenheuvel ◽

Piet Claus ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Image Registration ◽

Speckle Tracking ◽

Cardiac Motion ◽

Strain Estimation ◽

Elastic Image Registration

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Evaluation of synergistic image registration for motion-corrected coronary NaF-PET-MR

Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.2020.0202 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 379 (2200) ◽

Author(s):

Johannes Mayer ◽

Yining Jin ◽

Thomas-Heinrich Wurster ◽

Marcus R. Makowski ◽

Christoph Kolbitsch

Keyword(s):

Image Registration ◽

Motion Estimation ◽

Numerical Simulations ◽

Respiratory Motion ◽

Plaque Composition ◽

Theme Issue ◽

Tomographic Image Reconstruction ◽

Combined Motion ◽

Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is caused by the formation of plaques in the coronary arteries and is one of the most common cardiovascular diseases. NaF-PET can be used to assess plaque composition, which could be important for therapy planning. One of the main challenges of NaF-PET is cardiac and respiratory motion which can strongly impair diagnostic accuracy. In this study, we investigated the use of a synergistic image registration approach which combined motion-resolved MR and PET data to estimate cardiac and respiratory motion. This motion estimation could then be used to improve the NaF-PET image quality. The approach was evaluated with numerical simulations and in vivo scans of patients suffering from CAD. In numerical simulations, it was shown, that combining MR and PET information can improve the accuracy of motion estimation by more than 15%. For the in vivo scans, the synergistic image registration led to an improvement in uptake visualization. This is the first study to assess the benefit of combining MR and NaF-PET for cardiac and respiratory motion estimation. Further patient evaluation is required to fully evaluate the potential of this approach. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Synergistic tomographic image reconstruction: part 1’.

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