Ultrasound

Cardiac cycle

Biomedical engineering

Diastole

Nuclear magnetic resonance

Computer science

Acoustics

Vector flow

Image segmentation

Radiology

Imaging phantom

Transducer

Physics

Blood pressure

Segmentation

Intracardiac injection

Systole

Internal medicine

Artificial intelligence

Cardiac imaging

Medicine

Blood flow

Nuclear medicine

Ventricle

IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging

In vivo characterization of intracardiac blood velocity vector fields may provide new clinical information but is currently not available for bedside evaluation. In this paper, 4-D vector flow imaging for intracardiac flow assessment is demonstrated using a clinical ultrasound (US) system and a matrix array transducer, without the use of contrast agent. Two acquisition schemes were developed, one for full volumetric coverage of the left ventricle (LA) at 50 vps and a 3-D thick-slice setup with continuous frame acquisition (4000 vps), both utilizing ECG-gating. The 3-D vector velocity estimates were obtained using a novel method combining phase and envelope information. In vitro validation in a rotating tissue-mimicking phantom revealed velocity estimates in compliance with the ground truth, with a linear regression slope of 0.80, 0.77, and 1.03 for the x, y, and z velocity components, and with standard deviations of 2.53, 3.19, and 0.95 cm/s, respectively. In vivo measurements in a healthy LV showed good agreement with PC-MRI. Quantitative analysis of energy loss (EL) and kinetic energy (KE) further showed similar trends, with peak KE at 1.5 and 2.4 mJ during systole and 3.6 and 3.1 mJ for diastole for US and PC-MRI. Similar for EL, 0.15-0.2 and 0.7 mW was found during systole and 0.6 and 0.7 mW during diastole, for US and PC-MRI, respectively. Overall, a potential for US as a future modality for 4D cardiac vector flow imaging was demonstrated, which will be further evaluated in clinical studies.

4-D Intracardiac Ultrasound Vector Flow Imaging–Feasibility and Comparison to Phase-Contrast MRI