Velocimetry has also been applied to medical images in order to obtain regional measurements of blood flow and tissue motion. Initially, standard PIV (single plane illumination) was adapted to work with x-ray images (full volume illumination), enabling the measurement of opaque flows such as blood flow. This was then extended to investigate the regional 2D motion of lung tissue, and was found to be a sensitive indicator of regional lung disease.
Velocimetry was also expanded to 3D regional measurements blood flow and tissue motion with a new technique – computed tomographic x-ray velocimetry – which uses information contained within the PIV cross-correlation to extract 3D measurements from 2D image sequences. Specifically, computed tomographic x-ray velocimetry generates a model solution, compares the cross-correlations of the model to the cross-correlation from the 2D image sequence, and iterates the model solution until the difference between the model cross-correlations and the image sequence cross-correlations are minimised. This technique is being used as a non invasive method to quantify functional performance of the lungs. It is being used in a clinical setting, and is being utilised in clinical trails conducted by institutions including Duke University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Oregon Health Science University