Real-time left ventricular volume of the canine heart from ultrasonic dimension data.

A real-time (instantaneous) system is presented to measure the dynamic volume of the left ventricle. This system uses the invasive measurement of long axis diameter, short axis diameter, and wall thickness of the cardiac left ventricle. Three pairs of pulse-transit ultrasonic dimension transducers are used to obtain these measurements. The dynamic volume was then found by applying these measurements to an ellipsoidal shell model of the left ventricle. It is possible to obtain on-site, real-time, continuous measurements of the left ventricular volume (LVV) by employing an electronic device which implements a corrected volume equation for the ellipsoidal shell model. The device's output is a calibrated estimation for the LVV. The function of the device is shown to compare well with other accepted measurements for the LVV.