An improved approach for cardiac dynamics analysis based on constrained local force model [CT volumetric images]

Proposes a constrained local force model to estimate the non-rigid motion of left ventricle over a cardiac cycle. The local force model is derived from the dynamics of independent point masses driven by local constant forces over a short period of time. The trajectory that minimizes the kinetic energy required to move a point mass from one surface to another is considered as the local displacement vector. However, the original model suffers from problems of potential one-to-many point correspondence and inconsistent motion estimation. The proposed constrained local force model attempts to achieve better and more accurate motion estimation. First, Gaussian curvature is incorporated as constraint on point correspondence to solve the one-to-many correspondence problem. Second, motion estimations of neighboring points are taken into account to obtain more consistent estimation. Experimental results show that the constrained model achieves an improved estimation in cardiac motion analysis