You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Education in Heart
Non-invasive imaging
Two dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography: basic principles
  1. Hermann Blessberger1,
  2. Thomas Binder2
  1. 1AKH Linz, Department of Internal Medicine I - Cardiology, Krankenhausstrasse, Austria
  2. 2Department of Cardiology, Medical University of Vienna, Internal Medicine II, AKH, Waehringerguertel, Vienna, Austria
  1. Correspondence to Professor Dr Thomas Binder, Department of Cardiology, Medical University of Vienna, Internal Medicine II, AKH, Waehringerguertel 18-20, 1090 Vienna, Austria; thomas.binder{at}meduniwien.ac.at

https://doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2007.141002

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Two dimensional (2D) speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) is a promising new imaging modality. Similar to tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), it permits offline calculation of myocardial velocities and deformation parameters such as strain and strain rate (SR). It is well accepted that these parameters provide important insights into systolic and diastolic function, ischaemia, myocardial mechanics and many other pathophysiological processes of the heart. So far, TDI has been the only echocardiographic methodology from which these parameters could be derived. However, TDI has many limitations. It is fairly complex to analyse and interpret, only modestly robust, and frame rate and, in particular, angle dependent. Assessment of deformation parameters by TDI is thus only feasible if the echo beam can be aligned to the vector of contraction in the respective myocardial segment. In contrast, STE uses a completely different algorithm to calculate deformation: by computing deformation from standard 2D grey scale images, it is possible to overcome many of the limitations of TDI. The clinical relevance of deformation parameters paired with an easy mode of assessment has sparked enormous interest within the echocardiographic community. This is also reflected by the increasing number of publications which focus on all aspects of STE and which test the potential clinical utility of this new modality. Some have already heralded STE as ‘the next revolution in echocardiography’. This review describes the basic principles of myocardial mechanics and strain/SR imaging which form a basis for the understanding of STE. It explains how speckle tracking works, its advantages to tissue Doppler imaging, and its limitations.

    Background

    Deformation parameters—strain and strain rate

    Strain is a dimensionless quantity of myocardial deformation. The so-called Langrangian strain (ε) is mathematically defined as the change of myocardial fibre length during stress at end-systole compared to its original length in a relaxed state at end-diastole=(l-l0)/l0 (figure 1). …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests In compliance with EBAC/EACCME guidelines, all authors participating in Education in Heart have disclosed potential conflicts of interest that might cause a bias in the article. The authors have no competing interests.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.