The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 12, 2010
Filed:
May. 14, 2007
Frederick H Epstein, Charlottesville, VA (US);
Ernesta M Meintjes, Cape Town, ZA;
Bruce S Spottiswoode, Cape Town, ZA;
Frederick H Epstein, Charlottesville, VA (US);
Ernesta M Meintjes, Cape Town, ZA;
Bruce S Spottiswoode, Cape Town, ZA;
Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Malvern, PA (US);
University of Virginia Patent Foundation, Charlottesville, VA (US);
University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, ZA;
Abstract
Myocardial tissue tracking techniques are used to project or guide a single manually-defined set of myocardial contours through time. Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE), harmonic phase (HARP) and speckle tracking is used to encode tissue displacement into the phase of complex MRI images, providing a time series of these images, and facilitating the non-invasive study of myocardial kinematics. Epicardial and endocardial contours need to be defined at each frame on cine DENSE images for the quantification of regional displacement and strain as a function of time. The disclosed method presents a novel and effective two dimensional semi-automated segmentation technique that uses the encoded motion to project a manually defined region of interest through time. Contours can then easily be extracted for each cardiac phase.