Spatial and temporal estimation of 3D cardiac movement, using optical flow algorithms

This paper proposes a new technique for 3D motion estimation of the left ventricle from a sequence of a heartbeat. Accurate motion estimation of the movement of cardiac walls has been shown to be very important for studying the cardiovascular illnesses. This technique is based on a processing chain from the acquisition to the 3D segmentation of the left ventricle area obtained from each image during the cardiac cycle. With the purpose of estimating the movement of the Left Ventricle we calculate the optical flow starting from a sequence of images using the method proposed by Horn and Schunck [1]. Our work demonstrates the application of Horn and Schunck algorithms for optical flow to estimate the 3D cardiac motion, and proposes to improve the accuracy of estimation by introducing constraints obtained by matching method.