First report on intraoperative vector flow imaging of the heart among patients with healthy and diseased aortic valves

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

The vector velocity method Transverse Oscillation (TO) implemented on a conventional ultrasound (US) scanner (ProFocus, BK Medical, Herlev, Denmark) can provide real-time, angle-independent estimates of the cardiac blood flow. During cardiac surgery, epicardial US examination using TO was performed on (A) 3 patients with healthy aortic valve and (B) 3 patients with aortic valve stenosis. In group B, the systolic flow of the ascending aorta had higher velocities, was more aliased and chaotic. The jet narrowed to 44% of the lumen compared to 75% in group A and with a vector concentration, a measure of flow complexity, of 0.41 compared to 0.87 in group A. The two groups had similar secondary flow of the ascending aorta with an average rotation frequency of 4.8 Hz. Simultaneous measurements were obtained with spectral Doppler (SD) and a thermodilution technique (TD). The mean difference in peak systolic velocity compared to SD in group A was 22% and 45% in B, while the mean difference in volume flow compared to TD in group A was 30% and 32% in B. TO can potentially reveal new information of cardiac blood flow, and may become a valuable diagnostic tool in the evaluation of patients with cardiovascular diseases.

Original languageEnglish
JournalUltrasonics
Volume56
Pages (from-to)243-250
Number of pages8
ISSN0041-624X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    Research areas

  • Aortic valve, Cardiac flow, Stenosis, Transverse oscillation, Vector flow imaging

ID: 331500783