Toward 3-D Echocardiographic Determination of Regional Myofiber Structure

As a step toward the goal of relating changes in underlying myocardial structure to observed altered cardiac function in the hearts of individual patients, this study addresses the feasibility of creating echocardiography-derived maps of regional myocardial fiber structure for entire, intact, excised sheep hearts. Backscatter data were obtained from apical echocardiographic images acquired with a clinical ultrasonic imaging system and used to determine local fiber orientations in each of seven hearts. Systematic acquisition across the entire heart volume provided information sufficient to give a complete map for each heart. Results from the echocardiography-derived fiber maps compare favorably with corresponding results derived from diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging. The results of this study provide evidence of the feasibility of using echocardiographic methods to generate individualized whole heart fiber maps for patients.