Cardiac motion and strain detection using 4D CT images: comparison with tagged MRI, and echocardiography

Ischemic heart disease is a leading cause of death in the modern world. Coronary obstruction is the basis for ischemic heart disease and leads to decreased cardiac supply and decreased contractility of the myocardium. Recently, high quality 4D computed tomography (CT) has become available for cardiac imaging and provides the clinician with high quality anatomical images. In this article, a new method is proposed to detect 3D motion and strain from 4D cardiac CT images by constraining intensity constancy, myocardial volume changes and motion smoothness assumptions. The proposed method is validated by using manual tracking of the cardiac CT landmarks. The average error for the manual tracking, by an expert, was 2.9 ± 0.9 mm. As an additional validation, the cardiac CT strain values were compared to the cardiac tagged magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 2D B-mode echocardiography strain values of the same patients. The correlation ratio was significantly high for CT and tagged MRI radial strain values (r = 0.76, 95% confidence interval, P < 0.001). The correlation ratio was meaningful for CT and echocardiography radial strain values as well (r = 0.67, 95% confidence interval, P < 0.001). The correlation ratio for CT and tagged MRI circumferential strain values was acceptable (r = 0.73, 95% confidence interval, P < 0.001), while the correlation ratio for CT and echocardiography circumferential strain values was good as well (r = 0.61, 95% confidence interval, P < 0.001). In general, motion and strain values computed from cardiac CT images agree with motion and strain values computed from tagged MRI and echocardiography images.