Abstract
Two-dimensional deformation of human left ventricles (Subjects were four normal volunteers and a patient with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy) during the ejection period was investigated using MRI with the tagging technique. The regional displacements and strains in the myocardial wall were analyzed from the motions of intersections of tagging stripes formed in the short-axis images. The results for normal volunteers showed that the magnitudes of displacement differed among regions (anterior, septal, posterior and lateral) of the left ventricle, but the magnitudes and the directions of the minimum principal strain were almost uniform over all regions. The magnitude of the minimum principal strain (cardiac contractility) in the anterior wall of the patient with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy clearly decreased compared with that of normal volunteers.
