Abstract
The intraoperative in-vivo mechanical function of the left ventricle has been studied thoroughly using echocardiography in the past. However, due to technical and anatomical issues, the ultrasound technology cannot easily be focused on the right side of the heart during open-heart surgery, and the function of the right ventricle during the intervention remains largely unexplored. We used optical imaging and digital image correlation for the characterization of the right ventricle motion and deformation during open-heart surgery. This work is a pilot study focusing on one patient only with the aim of establishing the framework for long term research. These experiments show that optical imaging and the analysis of the images can be used to obtain similar parameters, and partly at higher accuracy, for describing the mechanical functioning of the heart as the ultrasound technology. This work describes the optical imaging based method to characterize the mechanical response of the heart in-vivo, and offers new insight into the mechanical function of the right ventricle.
Highlights
Verification of the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique against data from the established ultrasound is subject of our ongoing studies
The second set of data includes tissue velocity, strain rate, strain, and fractional shortening[20,21,22]. These values are important for our study in terms of comparison to results obtained by other techniques, since their usage has already been established for monitoring of the functions of the heart
The new methodology could be proven to be a promising tool for future studies, for instance, on the complete description of the effects of various pharmaceutical agents, e.g., inotropes, on the mechanical function, movement, and biomechanical response of the right ventricle
Summary
Verification of the DIC technique against data from the established ultrasound is subject of our ongoing studies. The DIC analysis results were confirmed for biological tissue by carrying out a reference experiment on a sample with the same dimension cut from a porcine heart. The authors cited the difficulties of applying a suitable speckle pattern on the samples, especially in the case of moist sample surfaces Their proposed solution was to use an inverse speckle pattern (black on white background instead of white on black background). In one of the first in-vivo studies on live human tissue, Campo et al.[16] compared the recorded pulse wave velocity (PWV) of the arterial system using DIC and ultrasound According to their findings, PWV measurements from both methods were more or less similar in values. In a previous study[17], the authors have already shown that DIC can provide meaningful data on the deformation of the heart and the potential of DIC in the medical and biomechanics fields. Future research topics and possibilities are discussed at the end of the paper
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