Realtime velocimetry for evaluation of change in thickness of myocardium and arterial wall

The authors have already developed a new method for accurately tracking the movement of the heart wall and arterial wall based on both the phase and magnitude of the demodulated signals to determine the instantaneous position of an object. By pipelining and parallel processing using four high-speed digital signal processing (DSP) chips, the above developed method is realized in real time. By this system, velocity signals of the heart/arterial wall with small amplitudes less than several micrometers on the motion resulting from a heartbeat with large amplitude of several millimeters, can be successfully detected in real time. From the regional change in thickness of the heart wall, spatial distribution of myocardial motility and contractility can be evaluated. For the arterial wall, its elasticity can be evaluated by referring to the blood pressure. This new real-time system offers potential for quantitative diagnosis of myocardial motility and early-stage atherosclerosis