An Interposed Pad in Open-Chest Echocardiographic Porcine Scans for Mimicking Ultrasound Signal Attenuation in a Human Chest.

Opening a chest in an experimental echocardiographic animal study eliminates ultrasound signal attenuation by the chest wall. We developed a scanning technique that involves the use of an attenuative pad created from a mixture of urethane and titanium dioxide. The pad was interposed within transmission gel between the transducer face and cardiac surface in open-chest scans in a porcine model. Comparative measurements of left ventricular echogenicity without and with the pad demonstrate that the pad reproducibly causes ultrasound signal attenuation that closely mimics chest attenuation in clinical transthoracic echocardiographic studies.