Halmann M, Beyar R, Rinkevich D, Shapiro J R, Sideman S, Markiewicz W, Meltzer R S, Reisner S A
Department of Cardiology, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
J Am Soc Echocardiogr. 1994 Jul-Aug;7(4):355-62. doi: 10.1016/s0894-7317(14)80193-4.
Myocardial contrast echocardiography may provide important physiologic information on myocardial perfusion. Most current analysis programs use manual frame grabbing and selecting of the area of interest. This is time-consuming and not highly reproducible. A system for automatic analysis of myocardial contrast echocardiographic studies was developed and evaluated. The program acquires an electrocardiographically gated sequence of end-diastolic images with a frame grabber in a personal computer. The baseline image is subtracted and the videodensity versus time contrast curve parameters are calculated on-line. Fast color-coded analysis is done automatically with a running square window that covers the entire image. A second mode of contrast analysis allows manual selection of multiple regions of interest. The program was evaluated with contrast echo data from open-chest dogs and two demonstrative patients. This myocardial contrast analytic package is an inexpensive, rapid, flexible, convenient, and reproducible on-line method that facilitates myocardial contrast echocardiographic analysis.
