Analytical method to measure three-dimensional strain patterns in the left ventricle from single slice displacement data.
BACKGROUND
Displacement encoded Cardiovascular MR (CMR) can provide high spatial resolution measurements of three-dimensional (3D) Lagrangian displacement. Spatial gradients of the Lagrangian displacement field are used to measure regional myocardial strain. In general, adjacent parallel slices are needed in order to calculate the spatial gradient in the through-slice direction. This necessitates the acquisition of additional data and prolongs the scan time. The goal of this study is to define an analytic solution that supports the reconstruction of the out-of-plane components of the Lagrangian strain tensor in addition to the in-plane components from a single-slice displacement CMR dataset with high spatio-temporal resolution. The technique assumes incompressibility of the myocardium as a physical constraint.


RESULTS
The feasibility of the method is demonstrated in a healthy human subject and the results are compared to those of other studies. The proposed method was validated with simulated data and strain estimates from experimentally measured DENSE data, which were compared to the strain calculation from a conventional two-slice acquisition.


CONCLUSIONS
This analytical method reduces the need to acquire data from adjacent slices when calculating regional Lagrangian strains and can effectively reduce the long scan time by a factor of two.
Nasiraei Moghaddam
Abbas
A
Department of Radiological Sciences, Diagnostic Cardiovascular Imaging Section, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. abbas@caltech.edu
Saber
Nikoo R
NR
Wen
Han
H
Finn
J Paul
JP
Ennis
Daniel B
DB
Gharib
Morteza
M
D005260:Female; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male