Regional wall motion of the left ventricle (LV) has been analyzed from contrast ventriculograms by using 4 methods based on different geometrical frameworks. Two of them utilize moving internal reference systems, the center of mass (CMM) and the long axis (LAM) methods; the two other ones use fixed external reference systems, the area-based (ABM) and the Palo Alto (PAM) methods. The techniques were applied on a set of 81 patients: 42 were normal and composed the group I; 22 had a single vessel obstruction greater than 75% of the left anterior descending coronary artery (group II) with old necrosis or active ischemia of the LV anterior wall; 17 had a single vessel obstruction greater than 75% of the right coronary artery (group III) with old necrosis or active ischemia of the LV inferior wall. ABM and PAM showed the highest specificities and sensitivities on the studied sample. Therefore, we believe these two methods, of the techniques tested, are the best to quantitate wall motion from cineangiograms.