Magnetic Resonance Derived Myocardial Strain Assessment Using Feature Tracking

Purpose: An accurate and practical method to measure parameters like strain in myocardial tissue is of great clinical value, since it has been shown, that strain is a more sensitive and earlier marker for contractile dysfunction than the frequently used parameter EF. Current technologies for CMR are time consuming and difficult to implement in clinical practice. Feature tracking is a technology that can lead to more automization and robustness of quantitative analysis of medical images with less time consumption than comparable methods. Methods: An automatic or manual input in a single phase serves as an initialization from which the system starts to track the displacement of individual patterns representing anatomical structures over time. The specialty of this method is that the images do not need to be manipulated in any way beforehand like e.g. tagging of CMR images. Results: The method is very well suited for tracking muscular tissue and with this allowing quantitative elaboration of myocardium and also blood flow. Conclusions: This new method offers a robust and time saving procedure to quantify myocardial tissue and blood with displacement, velocity and deformation parameters on regular sequences of CMR imaging. It therefore can be implemented in clinical practice.