Three dimensional echocardiography system for quantitative analysis of the left ventricle

The authors have previously reported two components of a methodology for acquiring and quantitatively analyzing three dimensional (3D) echocardiograms of the human heart. This report describes tools that they have developed to facilitate analysis of the left ventricle (LV), and to expand the applications of the technology to analysis of the right ventricle and mitral apparatus. Specifically the authors describe methods for 3D imaging, image analysis, surface reconstruction, and quantitative analysis of cardiac parameters. They also describe methods for facilitating these analyses and for adapting them to different clinical and research applications, such as measuring the relationship between different structures of the heart in 3D. The authors present clinical data to illustrate the applications of these technical innovations