Echocardiography and Cardiovascular Function: Tools for the Next Decade

For over a quarter of a century, echocardiography has made an unparalleled contribution to clinical cardiology as a major tool for real-time imaging of cardiac dynamics. Echocardiography is widely used to assess cardiac function, and provides noninvasive information which is invaluable for the diagnosis of various disease states. In spite of its numerous advantages, in the clinical arena echocardiography has remained mostly qualitative and subjective. However, continued progress in our understanding of the interactions between ultrasound and tissue characteristics have brought about several new developments which allow quantitative analysis of ultrasound data. Among these new developments are endocardial boundary detection (frequently referred to as Acoustic Quantification), Color Kinesis and Doppler myocardial imaging. The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with the background necessary to understand and successfully utilize these methodologies. Chapters summarize in detail the studies that have validated these techniques thus far, and discuss their future applications.