3-dimensional printing for the diagnosis of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction after mitral valve replacement.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of the generation of 3D models and 3D prints of complex cases for physicians at the example of an intricate left ventricular outflow tract obstruction (LVOTO). LVOTO is a known complication of mitral valve surgery. A 38-year-old female patient with increasing dyspnoea after mitral valve replacement was referred to our centre.

Three-dimensional echo for the assessment of valvular heart disease.

Three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) is a valuable tool to be used in addition to and not instead of two-dimensional echocardiography by providing complementary information and improved quantitative accuracy and reproducibility compared with two-dimensional techniques. 3DE has the potential to become the standard echocardiographic examination procedure for the assessment of valvular disease. This article describes applications of 3DE.

Three-Dimensional Echocardiography: The Gateway to Virtual Reality!

Virtual reality (VR) is one of the latest developments in cardiac three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound. A VR heart model linked to 3-D echocardiographic image datasets provides the observers spatial information regarding a 3-D image dataset and prevents the "lost in space effect" in difficult and relevant coupled diseases when integrated into 3-D reconstruction software. Standardized echocardiographic views can be selected within the integrated developed VR heart model, and this is the first step to automatic 3-D computations with minimal operator interaction.

Volumetric Holography of Cardiac Defects in Humans: Initial Clinical Experience Using Tomographic Echocardiographic Data.

We have previously described a method to develop holograms that does not entail the presence of laser light source in the clinical environment. Although we have demonstrated the feasibility of holography from cardiac ultrasound data to depict normal and abnormal cardiac anatomy in experimental studies, the ability of holography from ultrasound data to image structural cardiac anomalies in patients is not known. In this exploratory study, we addressed the question of whether it was possible to image cardiac pathology by holography in patients with mitral valve disease, atrial septal defects, and ventricular aneurysms.