Methods for kinematic analysis of the right ventricle

Despite playing a large role in many cardiovascular diseases (such as pulmonary hypertension), the heart's right ventricle (RV) is still poorly understood in regards to its complex shape and motion over the cardiac cycle. In this report, we examine the kinematics of the right ventricle and our ongoing progress towards developing a computational pipeline to extract functional measurements of deformation from cardiac computed tomography (CT) images. While other techniques in [2], [9], and [31] have been used to model the RV shape and motion, they lack a clear physical interpretation of their results. By using a central axis governed by blood ow direction, left ventricle based coordinate system, and deformable NURBS shape representation, we aim to identify kinematic modes that have a more direct physiological meaning. In doing so, the proposed methods could be eventually developed into an image-based tool for both diagnostic and prognostic purposes.