SPEQLE (Software package for echocardiographic quantification LEuven) an integrated approach to ultrasound-based cardiac deformation quantification

A software package, called SPEQLE, was developed to integrate the offline analysis of ultrasound based deformation imaging build on three integrated components (data organization, data extraction, timing parameter/extraction). At acquisition, digital DMI/SRI data sets are stored in a manufacturer-dependent data format. The data-organizing component converts this format into a standardized format and adds these data to the investigation of a patient defined within the study population of a project on a data server. The data-extraction component takes care of extracting velocity and strain rate traces based on tracking of an anatomical region of the myocardium through the 2D echo image. It provides an environment to manually track an anatomical region of the myocardium. The timing/parameter extraction component allows to define the timing of cardiac events based on the simultaneously presentation of different synchronous traces such as blood pool Doppler M-mode images, pressure traces... Finally, this component takes care of user-defined parameter extraction (various values quantifying velocity, displacement, strain and strain-rate during the cardiac periods), that are stored into the data structure. This integrated approach helps in standardizing and speeding up ultrasound deformation research.