Intracardiac flow visualization using high-frame rate blood speckle tracking echocardiography: Illustrations from infants with congenital heart disease

Abstract

We report applications of novel high-frame rate blood speckle tracking (BST) echocardiography in a series of infants with congenital heart disease (CHD). BST echocardiography was highly feasible, reproducible, and fast. High-frame rate BST provided complimentary information to conventional color-Doppler data enhancing the visualization and understanding of anomalous blood trajectories (eg, shunt direction, regurgitant volumes, and stenotic jets) and vortex formation. High-frame rate BST echocardiography is a new, promising imaging tool that may be helpful for deeper understanding of complex CHD physiology.

Keywords: blood speckle tracking; congenital heart disease; vector flow echocardiography.