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Updated: May 22, 2026
Transthoracic Speckle Tracking Echocardiography for the Quantitative Assessment of Left Ventricular Myocardial Deformation
Published on: October 20, 2016
Assessment of fetal myocardial deformation using speckle tracking techniques
Ioannis Germanakis1, Helena Gardiner
1Faculty of Medicine, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece.
Objective:
To report the current status of speckle tracking techniques in evaluation of fetal myocardial deformation.
Methods:
A variety of non-Doppler ultrasound methods are available using offline analysis of standard four-chamber and short axis views of the heart.
Results:
Most reports have used techniques developed for the measurement of strain and strain rate in the adult heart and produced conflicting descriptions of gestational changes in strain. Myocardial velocities usually reflect mean modal velocities and are lower than the peak velocities obtained using Doppler techniques.
Conclusions:
In the fetus, most current methods of acquisition result in frame rates that are too low, and the fetal heart size is too small to achieve reliable measures of fetal myocardial deformation.
