Myocardial Motion Estimation from Cardiac Cine-mri with a Phase-based Optical Flow Method

Introduction: The aim of this study was to estimate myocardial motion directly from a conventional SSFP (steady-state free precession) cine-MRI sequence. This sequence provides precise morphological information coupled with an adequate temporal resolution and excellent contrast between structures. We propose to use information naturally present in SSFP Cine-MRI for myocardial motion estimation. Generally, the evaluation of myocardial motion from cine-MRI sequences requires a visual evaluation of the regional contractile function and depends on the experience of the reader. Here, we propose to automatically and accurately detect myocardial wall motion abnormalities from cardiac cine-MRI. The technique used to assess motion information is an optical flow approach based on phase information. Optical flow (OF) is the representation of the apparent two-dimensional movement of an object in a scene. This technique allows the detection of local movement estimated at each pixel in the image with sub-pixel precision.