Local force model for cardiac dynamics analysis from volumetric image sequences

We propose a local force model based on the kinetics of the left ventricle (LV) surfaces to characterize the complex nonrigid motion that the heart undergoes. The left ventricle motion is analyzed in a coarse-to-fine fashion. First, global motion and deformation are analyzed and compensated with hierarchical surface modeling. Then, we propose a physics-based model of local deformation derived from the dynamics of independent point masses driven by local external force. Experimental results show that the ensembles of the estimated point mass trajectories match well with the realistic left ventricle surface dynamics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]