Wide-angle tissue Doppler imaging at high frame rate using multi-line transmit beamforming: An in-vivo pilot study

Colour tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) is a well-established methodology to assess local myocardial motion/deformation. Typically, a frame rate of ~200 Hz can be achieved by imaging a narrow sector (~30°, covering only one cardiac wall) at moderate line density, using a dedicated pulse sequence and multi-line acquisition (MLA). However, a wide angle sector (i.e., wide field-of-view) is required for some clinical applications in order to image the whole left ventricle, which currently implies a drop in the temporal resolution. Recently, multi-line transmit (MLT) beamforming has been shown capable of providing high quality, high frame rate, wide field-of-view B-mode images. Given the capability of MLT, the aim of this study was to test a novel tissue Doppler imaging sequence using the MLT approach to achieve high frame rate tissue Doppler imaging while preserving a wide field-of-view (i.e., 90° sector).