Heart motion visualization tools for 4D echocadiographic images

Qualitative and quantitative description of the heart wall motion is a very important field of investigation in modern cardiology. Abnormalities in heart motion are usually symptoms of life threatening cardiac dysfunctions therefore measurements of dynamic heart functions are of great clinical importance. The images of moving spatial heart structures can be efficiently acquired using 4D echocardiography. Unfortunately because of the low quality such images do not allow for precise measurements. To overcome this problem images need to be further processed and moving structures have to be extracted. In this work we present a method for estimating heart motion from 3D echocardiographic image sequence. On the basis of this method we have developed several visualization techniques that enable qualitative assessments of heart motions abnormalities. Together with quantitative measurements they may be become a useful tools in daily clinical practice.