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Updated: Jun 16, 2026
Transthoracic Speckle Tracking Echocardiography for the Quantitative Assessment of Left Ventricular Myocardial Deformation
Published on: October 20, 2016
Smooth constrained block matching algorithm for the evaluation of diaphragm deformation in speckle-tracking
Qiang Li1, Peiming Zhang2, Xiong Ye3
1Henan Center for Drug Evaluation and Inspection, Zhengzhou, Henan, China.
Background:
This study presents a novel ultrasound speckle-tracking algorithm as a technical feasibility demonstration for sub-pixel diaphragm deformation analysis.
Methods:
Six healthy beagles were enrolled in this study. Images were captured by a portable ultrasound system from the right and left hemidiaphragms. SCBM-based algorithms were designed to obtain the inter-frame/cumulative horizontal and vertical displacements, as well as the global strain of the diaphragm. The algorithm combined the inter-frame integer displacement estimation of the SCBM method, the sub-pixel level displacement estimation of the optical flow method, the cumulative displacement calculation of the continuous tracking algorithm, and the sub-pixel displacement accumulation correction algorithm, which is called SOCS. Global diaphragm strain was calculated from the displacements estimated by SOCS. Displacement and strain estimates were compared between the right and left hemidiaphragms.
Results:
SOCS algorithm can track the contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm by following the respiratory movement continuously. No significant difference was found between the right and left diaphragms when the mean or median cumulative displacement of all points in the ROI region of interest was used to approximate the diaphragmatic displacement (p > 0.05). Global diaphragm strain differed significantly between the left and right hemidiaphragms (all p < 0.05).
Conclusion:
This study presents a pilot feasibility demonstration of an ultrasound speckle-tracking method for diaphragm deformation analysis. The proposed method enabled estimation of inter-frame and cumulative displacement in the horizontal and vertical directions, as well as approximate global strain on two imaging planes. In this small cohort, left diaphragmatic strain differed significantly from right diaphragmatic strain. These findings suggest that diaphragm strain estimates may be sensitive to imaging-plane selection.
