Parametric Imaging for the Assessment of Cardiac Motion: A Review

The assessment of wall motion abnormalities such as hypokinesia or dyskinesia and the identification of their extent as well as their degree of severity allow an accurate evaluation of several ischemic heart diseases and an early diagnosis of heart failure. These dysfunctions are usually revealed by a drop of contraction indicating a regional hypokinesia or a total absence of the wall motion in case of akinesia. The discrimination between these contraction abnormalities plays also a significant role in the therapeutic decision through the differentiation between the infarcted zones, which have lost their contractile function, and the stunned areas that still retain viable myocardial tissues. The lack of a reliable method for the evaluation of wall motion abnormalities in cardiac imaging presents a major limitation for a regional assessment of the left ventricular function. In the past years, several techniques were proposed as additional tools for the local detection of wall motion deformation. Among these approaches, the parametric imaging is likely to represent a promising technique for the analysis of a local contractile function. The aim of this paper is to review the most recent techniques of parametric imaging computation developed in cardiac imaging and their potential contributions in clinical practice.