Tracking Fluorescent Artificial Features on Cardiac Surface for Evaluating Heart Function

This study proposes a solution for accessing the heart functions after cardiac surgery by integrating a self- developed NIR imaging system and optical flow method to track the NIR fluorescent artificial features on the cardiac surface. An animal test is performed to evaluate the imaging system and the possible approaches to extract heart performance from the features. This study adopted two approaches: the movement of a single cardiac surface feature point and the evaluation of distance changes of two feature points, which have been implemented for analyzing the features. The results of tracking the movement of a single cardiac surface feature point indicate the heartbeat and respiratory rates can be successfully determined, and an irregular myocardium shrink has been revealed. As for adopting the distance changes of two feature points, results show that respiratory-introduced motion disturbance can be suppressed, and the heartbeat rates can be determined.