High frame rate, wide-angle tissue Doppler imaging in real-time

Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) is an excellent tool for early detection of myocardial dysfunction, as well as for prognosis and follow-up of myocardial function after surgical treatment. However, since it exploits the same principles of color flow imaging, TDI requires to balance frame rate with field of view. A novel TDI technique, based on multi-line transmission and multi-line acquisition, was shown able to detect tissue motion without making this compromise. However, the technique was only tested by processing acquired data off-line. In this work we present the real-time implementation of this new TDI modality on the ULA-OP 256 system and demonstrate its performance. A maximum TDI frame rate of 288 Hz was achieved on a 90°-wide field-of view. In-vivo examples demonstrate the feasibility and the suitability of the method in clinical studies.