Methodology of Locating Myocardial Dysfunction by Strain and Strain Rate Using 4D Discretely Acquired Trans-Esophageal Echocardiogram

Abstract The article reported a methodology and a system development to locate the area of myocardial dysfunction using Trans-esophageal Echocardiogram (TEE) Introduction Recently, the resolution, the accuracy and the acquisition time of 4D echocardiogram imaging system are significantly improved. The excellent temporal and spatial resolution made the study of the regional and the global cardiac strain during contraction and relaxation period possible. Many researchers have reported using 3D and 4D cardiac imaging dataset in studying the ventricular functions [1.2]. However, in evaluation of ventricular performance using such imaging techniques, many cardiologists and researchers have being segmenting 3D left ventricular (LV) surface into 16 segmental ventricular mapping, for example, in 2D echo assessment In order to analyze the local dysfunction with imaging technique, 4D images of a completed cycle of heart beat were needed. The motion of endocardial strain and strain rate could be analogy to the cardiac functions in contraction and relaxation phase of heart beat Methods The images of echocardiogram for reconstructing the dynamic wire-frame models of LV was obtained from the digitized trans-esophageal echocardiograph (TEE) serial image by SONOS 2500 TM made by Phillips medical Systems (formerly Hewlett-Packard and Agilent). The images were acquired with ECG gated using 90 angles (2º/view) and 33 frame/second to scan an entire heartbeat, mainly, at the interested area of ventricular view. The total number of images been analyzed and processed in this presentation was 1800 (90 angles by 20 frame/heartbeat) slice of images. The acquired spatial resolution TEE image was 108 by 216 pixels (image size). In this article, the motion vectors of strain and strain rate were reconstructed from the acquired TEE images. The reported self-developed program will extract data for study the temporal and spatial resolution required in the understanding the motion of the Left ventricle. The example used in this paper was from the patient wit