[Diagnosis of coronary heart disease using echocardiography 3D reconstructions. Diagnosis of global and regional left...

The technique of tomographic 3D-echocardiographic reconstructions allows, beside the morphological description of cardiac structures, a left ventricular quantification concerning the diagnosis of the coronary heart disease. The advantage of the tomographic 3D-reconstruction and tomographic quantification is that the left ventricular volume is determined directly by manual planimetry during the whole heart cycle and will not be approximated by geographical algorithms as used for 2D-techniques and alternative 3D-techniques. We worked with the Echoscan reconstruction unit (TomTec) equipped with a pentium-processor and a 64 RAM memory for the acquisition and digitalization of a 3D-echocardiographic image data set (Figures 2a and 2b). Automatic image acquisition is performed using a unit existing of a common ultrasound transducer and a special rotational motor device. All the examinations described in this publication are performed by a transthoracic approach. Examining asymmetric model hearts with aneurysm an experimental study sustentiated the high accuracy of determining asymmetric ventricle volumes (mean of difference [3D--true dimensions] = 0.91 ml; SD of differences = +/- 6.17 ml) and aneurysm volume (mean of difference = 0.43 ml; SD of difference = +/- 2.14 ml). Also high reproducibility of 2 repeated 3D-measurements was documented (ventricular volumetry: mean of difference = -0.09 ml; SD of difference = 3.15 ml. Aneurysm volumetry: mean of difference = 0.24 ml; SD of difference = 0.17 ml). The principle of quantification by tomographic planimetry is usable the same way in vivo (Figures 3 and 4).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)