Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction using tissue deformation in echocardiographic imaging

Detecting abnormalities in the heart motion using ultrasound can be a major diagnostic tool, since reduced wall motion has correlation with ischemic muscle action. Having analyzed such ultrasound scans, it can be shown that the relevant tissue pattern is varying and its motion consists of expansion and contraction in addition to tissue deformations. Accordingly, we introduce a new approach and algorithm to detect and track tissue deformation using multiple hypotheses logic, based on block motion estimation that accounts for tissue expansion and contraction. Our proposed algorithm has been applied to in-vivo 2D scans of the left ventricle, providing useful results for the characterization of heart functionality.