A Novel Processing and Interactive GUI Package for Calculating Global, Segmental and Layer Specific Strains

Strain Imaging is a method in Echocardiography for measuring regional or global deformation of the heart muscle. It is used for assessing myocardial function, for diagnosing myocardial ischemia or infarction, for evaluation of systolic and/or diastolic dysfunction, and may be applied to guide placement of pacing leads in patients receiving cardiac resynchronization therapy. While there are several commercial products that measure strain, it has been shown that these products suffer from over-smoothing of the velocity measurements, rendering them inaccurate.We have developed a novel software package that include an interactive GUI, which enables loading echocardiography clips of AVI or DICOM formats and of various views. The GUI allows viewing the clip and choosing a frame, e.g. peak systole. It then calculates the basal and apical points, but allows the user to modify the calculated points. The software detects the LV endocardial and the epicardial boundaries, again allowing the user to modify their values. The global, segmental and layer-specific strains are then calculated and displayed.

The GUI as tested on ~100 clips of various views - LAX, 2CH, 4CH, in DICOMS and AVI formats. A GUI snapshot is shown below.