Flow Dynamics in Children With Bicuspid Aortic Valve: A Blood Speckle Tracking Study

Four-Dimensional Flow Echocardiography: Blood Speckle Tracking in Congenital Heart Disease: How to Apply, How to Interpret, What Is Feasible, and What Is Missing Still

“…Other studies [15,18] have proved how feasibility of BST for LV vortex analysis was also very high, varying from 95.6% to 98% [15,18] in healthy children to 93.7% for children with CHD [18]. BST, furthermore, was highly feasible in the evaluation and characterization of aortic flow patterns [8,19], as well as for the quantification of 2D of the left ventricle [15,18] and aortic [19] vortex dimensions. BST offered the advantage of accurate and reproducible quantification of complex and new parameters, such as vorticity [8] and energy loss [8,10], but only with dedicated research software [8,10].…”

“…BST, furthermore, was highly feasible in the evaluation and characterization of aortic flow patterns [8,19], as well as for the quantification of 2D of the left ventricle [15,18] and aortic [19] vortex dimensions. BST offered the advantage of accurate and reproducible quantification of complex and new parameters, such as vorticity [8] and energy loss [8,10], but only with dedicated research software [8,10]. Research software has recently employed (2023) [14] for BST evaluation of left ventricular intraventricular pressure difference (IVPD) in healthy children and in those with different cardiomyopathies with a good feasibility (e.g., feasibility of 88.3% in controls, 80% in children with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), and 90.4% in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) [14].…”

“…BST analysis is very easy, fast, reproducible, and accurate for blood flow visualization across the heart chambers and main vessels [8,11,13,17,19]. Analysis of left ventricular vortex [15,18] and aortic flow patterns [8,19] is very feasible in both healthy neonates and children [8,15,18,19] and in those with CHD.…”

“…BST analysis is very easy, fast, reproducible, and accurate for blood flow visualization across the heart chambers and main vessels [8,11,13,17,19]. Analysis of left ventricular vortex [15,18] and aortic flow patterns [8,19] is very feasible in both healthy neonates and children [8,15,18,19] and in those with CHD. Two-dimensional quantification of vortexes is feasible with current technology [18,19], while more complex analysis (e.g., energy loss, intraventricular pressure difference, vorticity) [8,14] are feasible, but only with dedicated research software.…”

“…Healthcare 2024, 12, 263 2 of 14 More recently (2019), a new echocardiographic technique was introduced [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]: high-frame-rate blood speckle tracking (BST), using ultrafast ultrasound imaging for blood visualization. BST uses a new non-focal plane wave ultrafast (e.g., 2500-5000 frames per second, reduced on the display to 400-600 frames per second) ultrasound technology [12][13][14][15].…”