One-year impact of bariatric surgery on left ventricular mechanics: results from the prospective FatWest study.

Aims: Patients with severe obesity are predisposed to left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy, increased myocardial oxygen demand, and impaired myocardial mechanics. Bariatric surgery leads to rapid weight loss and improves cardiovascular risk profile. The present prospective study assesses whether LV wall mechanics improve 1 year after bariatric surgery.

A left ventricular phantom for 3D echocardiographic twist measurements.

Traditional two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) studies have shown a wide range of twist values, also for normal hearts, which is due to the limitations of short-axis 2D ultrasound. The same limitations do not apply to three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound, and several studies have shown 3D ultrasound to be superior to 2D ultrasound, which is unreliable for measuring twist. The aim of this study was to develop a left ventricular twisting phantom and to evaluate the accuracy of 3D STE twist measurements using different acquisition methods and volume rates (VR).

Optimal Acquisition Settings for Speckle Tracking Echocardiography-Derived Strains in Infants: An In Vitro Study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of frame rate and probe frequency on the accuracy of speckle tracking echocardiography-derived strain measurements in infants. An infant-sized left ventricle phantom with sonomicrometer crystals was made from polyvinyl alcohol. The examined stroke rates were 60, 120 and 180 strokes per min (SPM).

Myocardial function in aortic stenosis--insights from radial multilayer Doppler strain.

Background: Left ventricular (LV) radial tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) strain increases gradually from the subepicardial to the subendocardial layer in healthy individuals. A speckle tracking echocardiography study suggested this gradient to be reduced in parallel with increasing aortic stenosis (AS) severity.

Methods: We used TDI strain in 84 patients with AS (mean age 73 ± 10 years, 56% hypertensive) for superior assessment of layer strain.

Is strain by Speckle Tracking Echocardiography dependent on user controlled spatial and temporal smoothing? An experimental porcine study.

Background: Speckle Tracking Echocardiography (STE) strain analysis relies on both spatial and temporal smoothing. The user is often allowed to adjust these smoothing parameters during analysis. This experimental study investigates how different degrees of user controllable spatial and temporal smoothing affect global and regional STE strain values in recordings obtained from normal and ischemic myocardium.

Accuracy of real-time single- and multi-beat 3-d speckle tracking echocardiography in vitro.

With little data published on the accuracy of cardiac 3-D strain measurements, we investigated the agreement between 3-D echocardiography and sonomicrometry in an in vitro model with a polyvinyl alcohol phantom. A cardiac scanner with a 3-D probe was used to acquire recordings at 15 different stroke volumes at a heart rate of 60 beats/min, and eight different stroke volumes at a heart rate of 120 beats/min. Sonomicrometry was used as a reference, monitoring longitudinal, circumferential and radial lengths.

Multi-layer radial systolic strain vs. one-layer strain for confirming reperfusion from a significant non-occlusive coronary stenosis.

Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate whether multi-layer radial strain and strain rate analysis is superior to one-layer strain analysis for confirming reperfusion following a non-occlusive coronary stenosis.

Methods And Results: In 10 anaesthetized pigs, an extracorporeal shunt was inserted from the brachiocephalic to the left anterior descending coronary artery. Microspheres were injected and left ventricular (LV) short- and long-axis echocardiographic views were recorded with the open shunt, during the 120 min of severe stenosis and 20 min (early) and 100 min (late) after reperfusion.