Development of a realistic numerical phantom to test and validate CMR feature tracking software

摘要

Feature tracking (FT) is a relatively recent post-processing technique that uses standard clinical Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) cine images to derive myocardial deformation parameters such as strain for early patient diagnosis and follow-up. However, differences in calculated values between software packages and the lack of absolute validation have hindered its clinical acceptance. Research is active in the development of realistic cine model simulations for which motion deformation parameters are known a priori, to be used as the "gold-standard" to validate CMRFT packages. The aim of the present work was to use numerical simulation to generate a realistic single slice short-axis bSSFP cine model with known myocardial motion parameters to use as a goldstandard for CMR-FT comparison and validation.