Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

For many years 3D echocardiography has been available and offers a very fast and efficient way to scan the heart.However, because of the limitations of current 3D echocardiographic scanners (spatial resolution, signal to noise ratio, fieldof view), 3D assessment of the heart structures and left ventricular function has been performed only in a minority of patientsundergoing transthoracic echocardiography. The goal of this project is to: 1) develop a new method for a real-time fusion of3D echocardiography in standard clinical settings applicable to a wider range of subjects; 2) incorporate changes in theposition of the heart due to respiration and any positional changes of the patients; and 3) improve the ultrasound imagequality of the scan using advanced image processing techniques. We propose to develop 3D fusion echocardiography andto evaluate its clinical utility in patients in whom an accurate assessment of the cardiac function is clinically needed, butstandard (conventional) 3D echocardiography cannot be applied because of insufficient image quality and therefore contrastechocardiography or cardiac MRI are performed instead. The technical refinements of the multiview fusion method whichcan be made from our research will establish a prototype for recording/processing of multiview 3D fusion echocardiography.This will allow to perform a multicentre trial and finally to introduce multiview fusion imaging into wider clinical practice.