Detection of acute myocardial ischemia during pharmacological stress in graded coronary artery stenosis: analysis of left ventricular asynchrony using Fourier phase imaging in pigs.

Background: Stress echocardiography is increasingly used to identify coronary artery disease, but quantitative techniques are required to improve the accuracy of this method. Current algorithms used to analyze wall motion usually neglect motion asynchrony that is found in acute ischemia. Fourier phase imaging of echocardiographic images may offer the possibility to detect asynchrony, but its feasibility with dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) is undefined.