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.