PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To support the diagnosis and treatment on the cardiac muscles by automatically analyzing the heart wall motion.SOLUTION: A control part 30 of the MRI apparatus inputs a Cine image capturing the cardiac muscles of a subject for the examination, and further inputs a Tagging Cine image of the cardiac muscles of the subject for the examination. An endocardium region and an epicardium region are extracted from the input Cine image. After that, a cardiac muscle region is extracted from the image based on the endocardium and epicardium regions, and the extracted cardiac muscle region is disposed on the Tagging Cine image. Then, a tagging point within the cardiac muscle region is detected in each time phase, and the detected tagging points are associated with same tagging points among time phases. The cardiac muscle strain is analyzed based on the quantity of displacement of the respective associated tagging points.COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT【課題】心壁運動の解析を自動的に行うことで心筋に関する診断や治療を支援する。【解決手段】MRI装置の制御部30が、検査対象の被検体の心筋が撮像されたCine画像を入力し、さらに、検査対象の被検体の心筋のTagging Cine画像を入力し、入力したCine画像から心内膜領域および心外膜領域を抽出する。その後、心内膜領域および心外膜領域をもとに心筋領域を抽出し、抽出した心筋領域をTagging Cine画像上に配置する。そして、心筋領域内にあるTag点を時相ごとに検出し、検出したTag点を時相間で同一のTag点ごとにそれぞれ関連付け、関連付けた各Tag点の変位量に基づいて心筋ストレイン解析を行う。【選択図】 図2
