Application of Tissue Doppler Imaging in Cardiology

Abstract

Tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) is a new echocardiographic technique employing the Doppler principle to measure the velocity of myocardial segments and other cardiac structures. It is well suited for the measurement of long-axis ventricular function. Impairment of longitudinal myocardial fiber motion is a sensitive marker of early myocardial dysfunction and ischaemia, and TDI might therefore become an important tool in routine echocardiography. The technique allows truly quantitative measurement of regional myocardial function both at rest and during stress echocardiography. TDI has great potential in the diagnosis of diastolic left ventricular dysfunction, overcoming the load-dependence of conventional Doppler techniques. Right ventricular function, intracardiac and pulmonary artery pressures, transplant rejection and intraventricular dyssynchrony can also be assessed. This article reviews the current and evolving applications of TDI in cardiology.

Tissue Doppler Echocardiography for Predicting Arterial Stiffness Assessed by Cardio-Ankle Vascular Index

“…Sample volumes were located at the septal site of the mitral annulus. Peak early (E') and late (A') diastolic mitral annular velocities and the ratio of early to late peak velocities (E'/A') were measured over 3 cardiac cycles and the results were averaged (Sohn et al 1997;Ommen et al 2000;Nikitin and Witte 2004). These parameters obtained from tissue Doppler echocardiography were also analyzed as parameters of LV diastolic function.…”

“…Recently, mitral annular velocity measured by tissue Doppler echocardiography, which measures velocities of regional cardiac wall, has been widely used for assessment of LV diastolic function (Ommen et al 2000;Nikitin and Witte 2004;Masugata et al 2008), because parameters from tissue Doppler echocardiography are less influenced by LV preload than are the parameters of conventional Doppler echocardiography. Thus, the parameters from tissue Doppler echocardiography do not show pseudonormaliza-tion even in cases with severe LV diastolic dysfunction (Sohn et al 1997), and can discriminate severe from mild LV diastolic dysfunction.…”

Tissue Doppler Imaging in the horse

“…Somit müssen mehrere Kurven angefertigt werden, um vollständige Segmente zu erfassen. Dies stellt besonders im Rahmen der Stressechokardiographie ein Problem dar, da die verfügbare Untersuchungszeit stark limitiert ist (Nikitin et al 2004). …”

“…Aus den parasternalen Anschallwinkeln können lediglich radiale Geschwindigkeitskomponenten des Myokards gemessen werden (Flachskampf 2002). Dabei beeinflussen Rotations-und Translationsbewegungen des Herzens die Ergebnisse der Geschwindigkeitsmessungen im Vergleich zu den longitudinal gemessenen Myokardgeschwindigkeiten (Nikitin et al 2004). …”

“…Da in der Literatur die Geschwindigkeiten im Endokard als bis zu dreimal schneller beschrieben wird als im Bereich des Epikards (Chetboul et al 2004a), ist die Bestimmung der radialen Myokardgeschwindigkeit gegenüber der longitudinalen Myokardgeschwindigkeit durch einen erhöhten Einfluss von Rotations-und Translationsbewegungen des Herzens beeinträchtigt (Nikitin et al 2004). In der Humanmedizin wird darüber hinaus ein von basal nach apikal abfallender Geschwindigkeitsgradient im Myokard beschrieben (Hoffmann 2002).…”