A visual framework for the study of cardiac motion

A visual framework is presented to solve the problem of left ventricle motion using cardiac image time sequences. A method for the estimation of the displacement field of the left ventricle boundary is proposed. Physical constraints, such as spatial smoothness of the displacement field and shape correspondence, are studied. The information contained in the estimated motion field is rendered explicit so that it can be utilized by medical experts (or for high level symbolic processing). With this aim in mind, a segmentation procedure of the left ventricle outline into line segments with homogeneous motion and deformation features is developed. The application of the method in X-ray cardiac imaging is illustrated