VIDEO: Vector flow and blood speckle echocardiography imaging may unveil new clinical insights

As echocardiography systems have been able to increase frame rates over the past decade, it has enabled additional information to be collected from cardiac ultrasound imaging studies. This includes the development of vector flow and speckle tracking imaging that can trace the paths taken by individual blood cells inside the heart to show energy loss and visualization of vortices. These factors are believed to play a crucial role in disease development and may act as early indicators for disease detection. 

These technologies were developed nearly a decade ago and are still in the process of being investigated and validated, but are available on a couple commercially available echo systems. 

Cardiovascular Business spoke with Luc Mertens, MD, section head of echocardiography at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, at the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) 2023 meeting about his research in this area for pediatric cardiac assessments. 

"This allows you to track the blood as it flows through the heart, and that allows you to do a very detailed assessment of flow characteristics. That offers the opportunity to look at new flow characteristics like vortices and energy losses as the blood flows through the heart and it gives insight into understanding physiology and how the blood flow changes in different disease conditions. If we can quantify energy losses better in congenital heart disease, we can better understand the effect of certain therapies on blood flow within the heart," Mertens explained.