High frame rate color Doppler to measure intraventricular pressure gradients

In echocardiography, Color Doppler imaging (CDI) is mainly used for a qualitative analysis of abnormal blood flows. Indeed, any quantitative assessment is hampered by the compromise between frame rate, field of view, and measurement quality. Recently, we showed that high frame rate (HFR) imaging techniques, applied to CDI, soften those limitations at the expense of reduced image quality and penetration depth. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess whether HFR-CDI could provide non-invasive, quantitative estimates of the intraventricular pressure gradient (IVPG), which may be an important marker for the diagnosis of diastolic function. Acquisitions, conducted on 29 healthy volunteers, showed that both diverging wave and multiline transmission allow achieving a high enough frame rate for a quantitative use of CDI. Indeed, diastolic IVPG peak values obtained with HFR-CDI where not statistically different from those obtained with standard color M-Mode, i.e. the gold standard reference.