Education in Heart
Non-invasive imagingReal-time three dimensional echocardiography: current and future clinical applications
1 Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
2 Department of Cardiology, Imperial College of Medicine and Technology, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to Professor Jeroen J Bax, Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Albinusdreef 2, 2333 ZA Leiden, The Netherlands; j.j.bax@lumc.nl
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Conventional echocardiography is the most commonly used imaging technique in clinical cardiology. However, the complex cardiac anatomy and the sophisticated functional mechanisms of the cardiac structures require a transition from a two dimensional (2D) to a three dimensional (3D) approach. In fact, conventional 2D echocardiography makes significant geometric assumptions for the quantification of cardiac size, and only permits cross-sectional views for interpretation of cardiac pathologies. Real-time 3D echocardiography (RT3DE) may overcome most of these limitations and is now readily available as a clinically applicable imaging technique.w1
Early approaches to 3D echocardiography were based on off-line and time consuming reconstructions of a series of 2D images obtained by either freehand scanning or a mechanically driven rotating transducer.w2 Current generation 3D echo transducers consist of a fully sampled matrix array of more than 3000 simultaneously active ultrasound elements that provide real-time volumetric scanning with rapid post-processing. Recently, this novel technology
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