Electronic Journal Technical Acoustics ISSN 1819-2408

Nima Sahba, Vahid Tavakoli, Alireza Ahmadian, Mohammad D. Abolhassani, Mohammad Fotouhi

Hybrid local/global optical flow and spline multi-resolution analysis of myocardial motion in B-mode echocardiography images

language: English

received 18.11.2007, published 06.05.2008

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ABSTRACT

Since myocardial motion is directly related to cardiac vascular supply, it can be helpful in diagnosing the heart abnormalities. The most comprehensive and available imaging study of the cardiac function is B-Mode echocardiography. Diagnostic systems are expert dependent and motion is not clear in the B-mode echocardiography images and therefore many efforts are toward proposing new methods to measure the motion accurately. Most of the previous motion estimation methods suffer from shear, rotation and wide range of motions due to the complexity of the myocardial motion in B-Mode images. In order to increase the accuracy and robustness to shear, rotation and wide range of motions, a hybrid method based on a newly introduced algorithm called combined local global (CLG) optical flow in combination with multi-resolution spatiotemporal spline moments is proposed. The method achieves rotational error of 2.8 degrees per frame and amplitude error of 3.8 percent per frame. These results demonstrate a better efficiency with respect to other B-Mode echocardiography motion estimation techniques such as Lucas-Kanade, Horn-Schunck and spatiotemporal affine technique.

Key words: echocardiography, cardiac motion, combined local/global optical flow, spline multi-resolution, myocardial motion estimation, optical flow.

18 pages, 12 figures

Сitation: Nima Sahba, Vahid Tavakoli, Alireza Ahmadian, Mohammad D. Abolhassani, Mohammad Fotouhi. Hybrid local/global optical flow and spline multi-resolution analysis of myocardial motion in B-mode echocardiography images. Electronic Journal “Technical Acoustics”, http://www.ejta.org, 2008, 12.

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		Nima Sahba received his B.S. and M.S. from University of Science and Research, Tehran, Iran (2001-2008). He is currently a research assistant at Research Center for Science and Technology in Medicine (RCSTIM), Tehran, Iran. His research interests are: Cardiovascular imaging, Mammography Mass Detection, Medical Image Compression and ranklets. е-mail: nimasahba(at)gmail.com
		Vahid Tavakoli joined a joint degree program of M.S. Biomedical Engineernig and M.D. Medicine (Honored double degree) in 1998. He is currently working toward his PhD program in Electrical and Computer Engineering department, University of Louisville, KY, USA. His research interests are: Cardiovascular Motion Detection, Medical Robot Vision, Image-Guided surgery, Optical Flow and Registration. He is a student member of IEEE and IOMP and IMC. е-mail: vtavakoli(at)razi.tums.ac.ir
		Alireza Ahmadian received his PhD and DIC in Biomedical Image Processing from Imperial College of Science, Technology in Medicine, Biomedical Systems Group, London 1997. He then carried out a postdoctoral position at Kings College London, Multimedia Lab for two years working on 3D medical image compression and transmission. He is currently an Associate Professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Dept. of Biomedical Systems and research director of Research Centre for Science and Technology in Medicine, RCSTIM. His research interests are: multi-resolution wavelet analysis of biomedical signals and images, analysis of ECG signals, medical image segmentation, medical image compression. He is also a senior member of IEEE. е-mail: ahmadian(at)sina.tums.ac.ir
		Mohammad D. Abolhassani was born in Tehran, Iran in 1965. He received his BSc in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from University College London, UK in 1989 and MSc in Digital Electronics & Communication from UMIST, Manchester, UK in 1990 and PhD in Biomedical Systems from Imperial College of Technology and Medicine, UK in 1994. Currently he is associate professor of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Department of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and deputy head of Research Centre for Science and Technology in Medicine (RCSTIM). His research interests are medical instrumentation, medical ultrasound instrumentation, biological signal processing, and otoacoustic emission systems.
		Mohammad Fotouhi received his M.D. diploma from Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran (1991-1999). He then carried out cardiology program in Tehran Heart Center, Tehran, Iran (2001-2005). Currently he is working toward his fellowship program (interventional cardiology) in the same center. His research interests are: Electrophysiologic studies, Echocardiography and applying engineering methods in Echocardiography images. е-mail: m_fotuhi(at)yahoo.com