REAL-TIME 3D ULTRASOUND - A NEW LOOK AT THE HEART

Matrix array ultrasound is a medical imaging modality in which a 3D vo lume is scanned electronically without physically moving the transduce r, permitting rapid continuous 3D scanning of the heart. Unlike recons tructive 3D ultrasound, which relies on physically moving a linear arr ay and acquires data during multiple cardiac cycles gated to the EGG, matrix array ultrasound has no moving parts, resulting in a scan rate rapid enough (22 frames/second) to smoothly sample heart motion within a single cardiac cycle. Therefore, these cardiac studies have been de scribed as real time, and the modality itself has been labeled Real-Ti me 3D (RT3D) ultrasound. We review the first application of matrix arr ay ultrasound to in vivo cardiac imaging of normal volunteers, describ ing methods of displaying the data during the scan, as well as afterwa rds on a graphics replay station. We conclude that by introducing the capability of real-time 3D cardiac imaging, matrix array ultrasound pr ovides an important new clinical tool.