3D Tissue Doppler imaging with ultra high frame rate

High frame rate TDI, may be used to study propagation of mechanical waves. In this paper we present a 3D TDI modality which gives ~500 FPS. The high frame rate was achieved by using few transmit beams, plane wave, and packet size 1 on transmit. ECG trigged acquisition was used to acquire 3D B-mode in one cardiac cycle and 3D TDI in the next. Normal acquisition was used for 3D B-mode. Recording both 3D B-mode and 3D TDI allows us to produce a left ventricle mesh, by using GE 4D Auto LVQ, and map the calculated velocities onto the mesh. A feasibility study, where we compared with GE tri-plane TVI, was performed. Peak velocities from 6 positions in the base of the left ventricle were measured. Data from 5 normal subjects was recorded. Our results show that the differences between 3D TDI and the first tri-plane recording were comparable to the differences between the two tri-plane recordings.