Full-volume three-component intraventricular vector flow mapping by triplane color Doppler

Abstract

Objective. Intraventricular vector flow mapping (iVFM) is a velocimetric technique for retrieving two-dimensional velocity vector fields of blood flow in the left ventricular cavity. This method is based on conventional color Doppler imaging, which makes iVFM compatible with the clinical setting. We have generalized the iVFM for a three-dimensional reconstruction (3D-iVFM). Approach. 3D-iVFM is able to recover three-component velocity vector fields in a full intraventricular volume by using a clinical echocardiographic triplane mode. The 3D-iVFM problem was written in the spherical (radial, polar, azimuthal) coordinate system associated to the six half-planes produced by the triplane mode. As with the 2-D version, the method is based on the mass conservation, and free-slip boundary conditions on the endocardial wall. These mechanical constraints were imposed in a least-squares minimization problem that was solved through the method of Lagrange multipliers. We validated 3D-iVFM in silico in a patient-specific CFD (computational fluid dynamics) model of cardiac flow and tested its clinical feasibility in vivo in patients and in one volunteer. Main results. The radial and polar components of the velocity were recovered satisfactorily in the CFD setup (correlation coefficients, r = 0.99 and 0.78). The azimuthal components were estimated with larger errors (r = 0.57) as only six samples were available in this direction. In both in silico and in vivo investigations, the dynamics of the intraventricular vortex that forms during diastole was deciphered by 3D-iVFM. In particular, the CFD results showed that the mean vorticity can be estimated accurately by 3D-iVFM. Significance. Our results tend to indicate that 3D-iVFM could provide full-volume echocardiographic information on left intraventricular hemodynamics from the clinical modality of triplane color Doppler.

Value of clinical applications of differential pressure and relative pressure imaging in the left ventricle

“…Therefore, the horizontal velocity is approximate, and the degree of approximation is not spatially uniform. Studies have shown that 3D VFM could provide full-volume echocardiographic information on left intraventricular hemodynamics from the clinical modality of triplane color Doppler[ 45 ] but would depend on RPI technology being further developed.…”

Super-resolution Left Ventricular Flow and Pressure Mapping by Navier-Stokes-Informed Neural Networks

“…In the past decade, vector flow mapping (VFM) has gained acceptance as a modality to obtain time-resolved 2D velocity maps from color-Doppler echocardiographic acquisitions in the LV [16][17][18][19][20][21][22], as well as 3D velocity maps from triplane color-Doppler [23]. Early implementations of VFM recovered the cross-beam velocity component by enforcing planar mass conservation along circular arcs of the color-Doppler sector [16][17][18].…”

Phase Unwrapping of Color Doppler Echocardiography Using Deep Learning

“…Among methods to make color Doppler quantitative, Vector Flow Mapping has been introduced for intracardiac flow dynamics. This method allows the computation of 2D or 3D intraventricular velocity vector maps from color Doppler fields, using a physically constrained optimization approach [4], [5]. Intracardiac vector flow mapping from color Doppler requires two prerequisite steps: 1) delineation of the endocardial inner wall, and 2) correction of wrapped (aliased) Doppler regions.…”