New insights into regional systolic and diastolic left ventricular function with tissue Doppler echocardiography: From qualitative analysis to a quantitative approach

Tissue Doppler echocardiography is a variation of conventional Doppler now imaging. This modality allows quantification of the Doppler shift within th e range of myocardial tissue motion The velocity at a variety of myocardial sites can be determined and distinguished very rapidly by using Doppler te chniques. The velocity of moving tissue can be studied with pulsed wave tis sue Doppler sampling, which displays the velocity of a selected myocardial region against time, with high temporal resolution. In addition, the veloci ties can be calculated with time-velocity maps and displayed as color-encod ed velocity maps in either an M-mode or 2-dimensional format. This review w ill focus on the technical aspects and the different methods of tissue Dopp ler echocardiography for the analysis of regional systolic and diastolic le ft ventricular function. Whereas pulsed wave tissue Doppler echocardiograph y allows measurements of velocities of a selected myocardial region, color tissue Doppler gives the best overview of cardiac dynamics because the enti re scanned color data are displayed simultaneously. However,there is an inc reasing need for objective evaluation of tissue Doppler information Digital images and postprocessing of the data allow for quantitative off-line anal ysis, and the different approaches and parameters proposed from different c enters are discussed.