Strain rate tensor estimation from echocardiography for quantitative assessment of functional mitral regurgitation

Functional mitral regurgitation is a cardiac dysfunction that implies abnormal activity of normal leaflets in the context of impaired ventricular function. In echocardiography, it is usually described by geometric features and functional behavior. However, the usual measures do not take into account other mechanical properties such as the deformation of the myocardium. In this work we propose some mechanical features based on the strain tensor to better describe the functional mitral regurgitation. We also propose an automatic pipeline to extract the different measures from 3D ultrasound data. A pattern recognition approach is done to study the discriminant power of the proposed features. Results show a better performance of some of the features derived from the strain rate tensor compared to the effective regurgitant orifice area and the geometric features.