IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2014 May;33(5):1071-82. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2014.2303782.
In clinical practice, echocardiographers are often unkeen to make the significant time investment to make additional multiple measurements of Doppler velocity. Main hurdle to obtaining multiple measurements is the time required to manually trace a series of Doppler traces. To make it easier to analyze more beats, we present the description of an application system for automated aortic Doppler envelope quantification, compatible with a range of hardware platforms. It analyses long Doppler strips, spanning many heartbeats, and does not require electrocardiogram to separate individual beats. We tested its measurement of velocity-time-integral and peak-velocity against the reference standard defined as the average of three experts who each made three separate measurements. The automated measurements of velocity-time-integral showed strong correspondence (R(2) = 0.94) and good Bland-Altman agreement (SD = 1.39 cm) with the reference consensus expert values, and indeed performed as well as the individual experts ( R(2) = 0.90 to 0.96, SD = 1.05 to 1.53 cm). The same performance was observed for peak-velocities; ( R(2) = 0.98, SD = 3.07 cm/s) and ( R(2) = 0.93 to 0.98, SD = 2.96 to 5.18 cm/s). This automated technology allows > 10 times as many beats to be analyzed compared to the conventional manual approach. This would make clinical and research protocols more precise for the same operator effort.
在临床实践中，超声心动图医师通常不愿意投入大量时间进行额外的多普勒速度多次测量。获得多次测量的主要障碍是手动追踪一系列多普勒轨迹所需的时间。为了更容易地分析更多的心跳，我们提出了一种自动主动脉多普勒包络定量分析应用系统的描述，该系统与多种硬件平台兼容。它分析跨越多个心跳的长多普勒条带，并且不需要心电图来分离单个心跳。我们测试了其速度时间积分和峰值速度的测量值与参考标准的一致性，参考标准定义为三位专家各自进行三次独立测量的平均值。自动测量的速度时间积分与参考共识专家值具有很强的相关性（R²=0.94）和良好的 Bland-Altman 一致性（SD=1.39cm），并且实际上与单个专家一样（R²=0.90 至 0.96，SD=1.05 至 1.53cm）。峰值速度也表现出相同的性能；（R²=0.98，SD=3.07cm/s）和（R²=0.93 至 0.98，SD=2.96 至 5.18cm/s）。与传统的手动方法相比，这种自动技术可以分析的心跳数增加了 10 倍以上。这将使临床和研究方案在相同的操作者努力下更加精确。
