Technical Issues Related to Digital Stress Echocardiography Analysis and Acquisition Stations

Digital acquisition and display of echocardiographic images has facilitated the development of stress echocardiography. This review will outline technical issues involved with digital capture and manipulation of echocardiographic data, referring to currently available commercial equipment. Among the acquisition items to be discussed are the source of the digitized data (direct digital transfer from the echo machine vs video capture); image resolution (spatial and temporal spacing of the digitized data); and EKG triggering options (direct triggering of the QRS complex vs detecting the QRS on the video transfer). During playback, rest and stress images may be displayed at different frame rates, so that systole will occupy approximately the same time interval. Currently available commercial systems are compared with regard to these features, as well as hardware architecture and operating system.