| With the increasing rate of myocardial infarction (heart attacks) in men and women, it is important to develop a diagnosis tool to determine the effect of MI on the mechanics of the heart and to minimize the impact of heart muscle damage on overall cardiac performance. One of the most common causes of heart attack is the blocking of coronary arteries, which supply blood and oxygen to the heart muscles to help them contract and relax during systolic and diastolic cycles of heart. After a myocardial infarct, the left ventricle of the heart enlarges to compensate for a weak heart muscle. The enlarged and weakened heart gives rise to the clinical syndrome of heart failure (fluid retention, fatigue and eventually death). In order to maximize the mechanical performance of the weakened heart, regional ventricular loading and contraction must be understood. In order to isolate regional wall mechanics, a floating center point for the ventricle must be determined. This is easy in the normal heart where the left ventricle approximates a single radius of curvature, however in heart failure there are irregular shape changes that complicate this determination.;This thesis is mainly focused on the problems related to finding the centroid of the heart in the short axis view of the left ventricle using echocardiographic images. It proposes a solution i.e. a new approach for finding the centroid of the heart.;The main focus of this thesis is to develop an algorithm that will help physicians to understand how different regions of the heart respond to changes in mechanical loading in heart failure. During each beat, the heart translates and rotates along its long axis. So, it is important to get an accurate centroid of the heart to correct for translation and rotation of the heart in each beat. The problem in finding the centroid of the heart is that the septum (the region that separates right and left sections of the heart) is loaded and moves differently from the freewall of the left ventricle. So, the complete ventricle cannot be used for center-point determination. |
