ECG-gated, mechanical and electromechanical wave imaging of cardiovascular tissues in vivo.

In simplistic terms, the motion of the heart can be summarized as an active contraction and passive relaxation of the myocardium. However, the local motion of cardiovascular tissues over the course of an entire cardiac cycle results from various transient events such as the valves closing/opening, sudden changes in blood pressure and electrical conduction of the myocardium. The transient motion generated by most of these events occurs within a very short time (on the order of 1 ms) and cannot be imaged correctly with conventional imaging systems, due to their limited temporal resolution. In this paper, we propose a method for imaging this rapid transient motion of tissues in cardiovascular applications. Our method is based on imaging tissues with ultrasound at high frame rates (up to 8000 fps) by synchronizing the two-dimensional (2D) image acquisition on the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. In vivo feasibility is demonstrated in anesthetized mice. The propagation of several transient mechanical waves was imaged in different regions of the myocardium and the wave phase velocities were found to be between 0.44 m/s and 5 m/s. These waves may be generated by either a purely mechanical effects or through electromechanical coupling in the myocardium depending on the phase of the cardiac cycle, in which they occur. The abdominal aorta was also imaged using the same technique and the propagation of a mechanical pulse wave was imaged. The pulse wave velocity was measured and the Young's modulus of the vessel wall was derived based on the Moens-Korteweg equation. This method could potentially be used for mapping the stiffness of the myocardium and the artery walls and may lead to the early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.