M.S. Thesis Presentation by Sylvain F. Milet
Tuesday, September 8, 1998

(Dr. A. P. Yoganathan, advisor)

"Development of an Interferometric System for Process Monitoring"

Abstract

Phase encoding MRI allows the measurement of all three components of velocity in the three-directional space in addition to the
visualization of the cardiac structure.  Using this technique the velocity fields in the left heart of cardiac patients with infarcted myocardium
and normals with healthy hearts were measured.

The velocity patterns in the left atrium and ventricle were characterized in terms of vortices, flow direction, magnitude, and the flow into the atrium and through the mitral valve.  In addition the mitral and pulmonary wave forms were extracted and analyzed for the patients and the healthy volunteers.  The pressure gradients in the cardiac chambers were computed from the velocity measurements by solving the inviscid Navier-Stokes equations.

A visualization program implemented on a Silicon Graphics Onyx was developed.  This program allows the user to interactively visualize the images, extract temporal velocity profiles at any location, animate time series of images, and perform computational analysis on the MR velocity data.