LV motion and strain computation from tMRI based on meshless deformable models.

We propose a novel meshless deformable model for in vivo Left Ventricle (LV) 3D motion estimation and analysis based on tagged MRI (tMRI). The meshless deformable model can capture global deformations such as contraction and torsion with a few parameters, while track local deformations with Laplacian representation. In particular, the model performs well even when the control points (tag intersections) are relatively sparse. We test the performance of the meshless model on a numeric phantom, as well as in vivo heart data of healthy subjects and patients. The experimental results show that the meshless deformable model can fully recover the myocardial motion and strain in 3D.