Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

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, field of view), 3D assessment of the heart structures and left ventricular function has been performed only in a minority of patients undergoing transthoracic echocardiography. The goal of this project is to: 1) develop a new method for a real-time fusion of 3D echocardiography in standard clinical settings applicable to a wider range of subjects; 2) incorporate changes in the position of the heart due to respiration and any positional changes of the patients; and 3) improve the ultrasound image quality of the scan using advanced image processing techniques. We propose to develop 3D fusion echocardiography and to evaluate its clinical utility in patients in whom an accurate assessment of the cardiac function is clinically needed, but standard (conventional) 3D echocardiography cannot be applied because of insufficient image quality and therefore contrast echocardiography or cardiac MRI are performed instead. The technical refinements of the multiview fusion method which can 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.