Identification of cardiac masses and abnormal blood flow patterns with harmonic power Doppler contrast echocardiography

Power Doppler is an ultrasound technique that color-encodes the change in a mplitude of the ultrasound signal, which reflects changes in the position o f scatterers between ultrasound pulses. Power Doppler can be used with echo cardiographic contrast agents in a harmonic imaging mode to opacify a cardi ac chamber. The opacification of a cardiac chamber can aid in visualizing t he silhouette of intracardiac masses and displaying blood flow patterns. Fo ur cases are presented that demonstrate the use of harmonic power Doppler t o aid in the identification of a left ventricular apical thrombus, a left a trial thrombus, and a left ventricular pseudo-aneurysm.