Assessment of regional myocardial function using 3D cardiac strain estimation: comparison against conventional echocardiographic assessment

Our labs introduced methods that are able to assess regional myocardial function, from volumetric ultrasound data. Burdock estimates myocardial deformation using a 3D speckle-tracking approach, while splineMIRIT is a B-spline transformation-based elastic registration method. The aim of the present study was to test and contrast the diagnostic accuracy of both approaches in the clinical setting. Furthermore, the manual initialization step, required by both methods, was replaced by using RCTL, a real time tracking, fully automatic library that provided the initial geometry of the left ventricle.