Ultrasonic tissue characterization: review of an approach to assess hypertrophic myocardium.

It is well known that left ventricular hypertrophy is associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the application and refinement of noninvasive diagnostic techniques for identification of myocardial tissue composition to permit differentiation between left ventricular hypertrophy that may be associated with irreversible, and therefore, possibly adverse, collagen accumulation ("pathological hypertrophy") as opposed to the type of possibly "benign" hypertrophy devoid of such characteristics (i.e., "physiological hypertrophy"). We review the current state of knowledge in the application of ultrasonic tissue characterization that addresses this question with respect to left ventricular myocardium.