Off-line processing of contrast echocardiography. From digital densitometry to parametric imaging.

Abstract:

 
 Computers have been playing an increasingly important role in medical
 diagnostics. Echocardiography is a non-invasive tomographic method for
 imaging the heart using the ultrasound. The blood in heart cavities and
 tissues becomes visible when microbubbles of gases are introduced into
 the circulation during contrast echocardigraphy, providing information
 about both the perfusion and function. Several algorithms have been
 proposed and applied off-line to enhance the inforamation obtained
 during the study. Digital subtraction, densitometry, alignment,
 color-coding, texture analysis, and parametric imaging are some of these
 methods that will be discussed.