Endocardial motion estimation from electro-anatomical data

An accurate scar characterization plays an essential role for the treatment of ventricular tachycardia in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy. Cardiac ablation based on electrical information is a widely used procedure to fix ventricular tachycardia. However, intra-operative scar characterization may be improved using mechanical information together with the electrical data. We propose in this paper a method to reconstruct the endocardial motion intra-operatively by exploiting both information from an electro-anatomical mapping system and the heart anatomy segmented from any pre-operative 3D imaging modality, using a bilinear statistical atlas to approximate motion in the areas where no information is provided. We applied the proposed methodology to four patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy. The results showed abnormal strain curves in presence of scar, which was defined using contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images.