Speckle Tracking Echocardiography
In the fields of cardiology and medical imaging, speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) is an echocardiographic imaging technique. It analyzes the motion of tissues in the heart by using the naturally occurring speckle pattern in the myocardium (or motion of blood when imaged by ultrasound). This method of documentation of myocardial motion is a noninvasive method of definition for both vectors and velocity. When compared to other technologies seeking noninvasive definition of ischemia, speckle tracking seems a valuable endeavor. The speckle pattern is a mixture of interference patterns and natural acoustic reflections. These reflections are also described as ''speckles'' or ''markers''. The pattern being random, each region of the myocardium has a unique speckle pattern (also called ''patterns'', ''features'', or ''fingerprints'') that allows the region to be tracked. The speckle pattern is relatively stable, at least from one frame to the next.Bohs LN, Trahey GE. A novel me ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cardiology
Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease, and electrophysiology. Physicians who specialize in this field of medicine are called cardiologists, a sub-specialty of internal medicine. Pediatric cardiologists are pediatricians who specialize in cardiology. Physicians who specialize in cardiac surgery are called cardiothoracic surgeons or cardiac surgeons, a specialty of general surgery. Specializations All cardiologists in the branch of medicine study the disorders of the heart, but the study of adult and child heart disorders each require different training pathways. Therefore, an adult cardiologist (often simply called "cardiologist") is inadequately trained to take care of children, and pediatric cardiologists are not trained to treat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Myocyte
A muscle cell, also known as a myocyte, is a mature contractile Cell (biology), cell in the muscle of an animal. In humans and other vertebrates there are three types: skeletal muscle, skeletal, smooth muscle, smooth, and Cardiac muscle, cardiac (cardiomyocytes). A skeletal muscle cell is long and threadlike with multinucleated, many nuclei and is called a ''muscle fiber''. Muscle cells develop from embryonic precursor cells called myoblasts. Skeletal muscle cells form by cell fusion, fusion of myoblasts to produce multinucleated cells (syncytium, syncytia) in a process known as myogenesis. Skeletal muscle cells and cardiac muscle cells both contain myofibrils and sarcomeres and form a striated muscle tissue. Cardiac muscle cells form the cardiac muscle in the walls of the heart chambers, and have a single central Cell nucleus, nucleus. Cardiac muscle cells are joined to neighboring cells by intercalated discs, and when joined in a visible unit they are described as a ''cardiac m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coronary Artery Disease
Coronary artery disease (CAD), also called coronary heart disease (CHD), or ischemic heart disease (IHD), is a type of cardiovascular disease, heart disease involving Ischemia, the reduction of blood flow to the cardiac muscle due to a build-up of atheromatous plaque in the Coronary arteries, arteries of the heart. It is the most common of the cardiovascular diseases. CAD can cause stable angina, unstable angina, myocardial ischemia, and myocardial infarction. A common symptom is angina, which is chest pain or discomfort that may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck, or jaw. Occasionally it may feel like heartburn. In stable angina, symptoms occur with exercise or emotional Psychological stress, stress, last less than a few minutes, and improve with rest. Shortness of breath may also occur and sometimes no symptoms are present. In many cases, the first sign is a Myocardial infarction, heart attack. Other complications include heart failure or an Heart arrhythmia, abnormal h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stress Echo
A cardiac stress test is a cardiological examination that evaluates the cardiovascular system's response to external stress within a controlled clinical setting. This stress response can be induced through physical exercise (usually a treadmill) or intravenous pharmacological stimulation of heart rate. As the heart works progressively harder (stressed) it is monitored using an electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor. This measures the heart's electrical rhythms and broader electrophysiology. Pulse rate, blood pressure and symptoms such as chest discomfort or fatigue are simultaneously monitored by attending clinical staff. Clinical staff will question the patient throughout the procedure asking questions that relate to pain and perceived discomfort. Abnormalities in blood pressure, heart rate, ECG or worsening physical symptoms could be indicative of coronary artery disease. Stress testing does not accurately diagnose all cases of coronary artery disease, and can often indicate that it e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ROC Analysis
A receiver operating characteristic curve, or ROC curve, is a graphical plot that illustrates the performance of a binary classifier model (can be used for multi class classification as well) at varying threshold values. ROC analysis is commonly applied in the assessment of diagnostic test performance in clinical epidemiology. The ROC curve is the plot of the true positive rate (TPR) against the false positive rate (FPR) at each threshold setting. The ROC can also be thought of as a plot of the statistical power as a function of the Type I Error of the decision rule (when the performance is calculated from just a sample of the population, it can be thought of as estimators of these quantities). The ROC curve is thus the sensitivity as a function of false positive rate. Given that the probability distributions for both true positive and false positive are known, the ROC curve is obtained as the cumulative distribution function (CDF, area under the probability distribution fr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spline Smoothing
Smoothing splines are function estimates, \hat f(x), obtained from a set of noisy observations y_i of the target f(x_i), in order to balance a measure of goodness of fit of \hat f(x_i) to y_i with a derivative based measure of the smoothness of \hat f(x). They provide a means for smoothing noisy x_i, y_i data. The most familiar example is the cubic smoothing spline, but there are many other possibilities, including for the case where x is a vector quantity. Cubic spline definition Let \ be a set of observations, modeled by the relation Y_i = f(x_i) + \epsilon_i where the \epsilon_i are independent, zero mean random variables. The cubic smoothing spline estimate \hat f of the function f is defined to be the unique minimizer, in the Sobolev space W^2_2 on a compact interval, of : \sum_^n \^2 + \lambda \int \hat^(x)^2 \,dx. Remarks: * \lambda \ge 0 is a smoothing parameter, controlling the trade-off between fidelity to the data and roughness of the function estimate. This is oft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Strain Rate Imaging
Strain rate imaging is a method in echocardiography (medical ultrasound) for measuring regional or global deformation of the myocardium (heart muscle). The term "deformation" refers to the myocardium changing shape and dimensions during the cardiac cycle. If there is myocardial ischemia, or there has been a myocardial infarction, in part of the heart muscle, this part is weakened and shows reduced and altered Systole, systolic function. Also in regional asynchrony, as in bundle branch block, there is regional heterogeneity of systolic function. By strain rate imaging, the simultaneous function of different regions can be displayed and measured. The method was first based on colour tissue Doppler.Heimdal A, Stoylen A, Torp H, Skjaerpe T. Real-time strain rate imaging of the left ventricle by ultrasound. J Am Soc Echocardiogr 1998 Nov;11(11):1013-19 by using the longitudinal myocardial velocity gradient, already in use transmurally. Later, the regional deformation has also been availab ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tissue Doppler Imaging
Tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE) is a medical ultrasound technology, specifically a form of echocardiography that measures the velocity of the heart muscle (myocardium) through the phases of one or more heartbeats by the Doppler effect (frequency shift) of the reflected ultrasound. The technique is the same as for flow Doppler echocardiography measuring flow velocities. Tissue signals, however, have higher amplitude and lower velocities, and the signals are extracted by using different filter and gain settings. The terms tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) and tissue velocity imaging (TVI) are usually synonymous with TDE because echocardiography is the main use of tissue Doppler. Like Doppler flow, tissue Doppler can be acquired both by spectral analysis (spectral density estimation) as pulsed Doppler and by the autocorrelation technique as colour tissue Doppler (duplex ultrasonography). While pulsed Doppler only acquires the velocity at one point at a time, colour Doppler can acquire ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sonomicrometry
Sonomicrometry is a technique of measuring the distance between piezoelectric crystals based on the speed of acoustic signals through the medium they are embedded in. Typically, the crystals will be coated with an epoxy 'lens' and placed into the material facing each other. An electrical signal sent to either crystal will be transformed into sound, which passes through the medium, eventually reaching the other crystal, which converts the sound into electricity, detected by a receiver. From the time taken for sound to move between the crystals and the speed of sound in the medium, the distance between the crystals can be calculated. History Sonomicrometry was originally applied in the study of cardiac function in research animals by Dean Franklin in 1956, and was quickly adopted by biologists working in biomechanics as well as other physiological organ systems and structures (gastro-intestinal, uro-genital and musculo-skeletal). Medical device companies also use sonomicrometry t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Myofiber
A muscle cell, also known as a myocyte, is a mature contractile cell in the muscle of an animal. In humans and other vertebrates there are three types: skeletal, smooth, and cardiac (cardiomyocytes). A skeletal muscle cell is long and threadlike with many nuclei and is called a ''muscle fiber''. Muscle cells develop from embryonic precursor cells called myoblasts. Skeletal muscle cells form by fusion of myoblasts to produce multinucleated cells (syncytia) in a process known as myogenesis. Skeletal muscle cells and cardiac muscle cells both contain myofibrils and sarcomeres and form a striated muscle tissue. Cardiac muscle cells form the cardiac muscle in the walls of the heart chambers, and have a single central nucleus. Cardiac muscle cells are joined to neighboring cells by intercalated discs, and when joined in a visible unit they are described as a ''cardiac muscle fiber''. Smooth muscle cells control involuntary movements such as the peristalsis contractions in the esop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Potential Energy
In physics, potential energy is the energy of an object or system due to the body's position relative to other objects, or the configuration of its particles. The energy is equal to the work done against any restoring forces, such as gravity or those in a spring. The term ''potential energy'' was introduced by the 19th-century Scottish engineer and physicist William Rankine, although it has links to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's concept of Potentiality and Actuality, ''potentiality''. Common types of potential energy include gravitational potential energy, the elastic potential energy of a deformed spring, and the electric potential energy of an electric charge and an electric field. The unit for energy in the International System of Units (SI) is the joule (symbol J). Potential energy is associated with forces that act on a body in a way that the total Work (physics), work done by these forces on the body depends only on the initial and final positions of the b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tissue Doppler
Tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE) is a medical ultrasound technology, specifically a form of echocardiography that measures the velocity of the heart muscle (myocardium) through the phases of one or more heartbeats by the Doppler effect (frequency shift) of the reflected ultrasound. The technique is the same as for flow Doppler echocardiography measuring flow velocities. Tissue signals, however, have higher amplitude and lower velocities, and the signals are extracted by using different filter and gain settings. The terms tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) and tissue velocity imaging (TVI) are usually synonymous with TDE because echocardiography is the main use of tissue Doppler. Like Doppler flow, tissue Doppler can be acquired both by spectral analysis ( spectral density estimation) as pulsed Doppler and by the autocorrelation technique as colour tissue Doppler (duplex ultrasonography). While pulsed Doppler only acquires the velocity at one point at a time, colour Doppler can acquir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |