Assessing the wall motion of pulmonary veins of the left atrium

Atrial fibrillation is caused by some excited cardiac myocardium re-stimulated by the recurrent impulse that made the left atrium contraction irregularly. The changes of cardiac patterns could be recorded by the CT scan of the multi-slices and multi-frame technology. The abnormal rhythmic wall motion can be analyzed between the systolic of atrium and diastolic of atrium. This study has developed a 4D cardiac image analysis tool to extract atrial wall motion information. Twenty set of 4D CT cardiac images have been tested with the developed program. The motion of interested area could be evaluated with the vector in 3D with magnitude and phase angles. From the statistical analysis of motion vector over root area of four pulmonary veins, the right inferior pulmonary vein has shown abnormal motion significantly.