Investigating cardiac function using motion and deformation analysis in the setting of coronary artery disease.

IIn the last decade, noninvasive cardiac imaging has played an increasing role in cardiology. As one of the most widespread clinically used techniques, echocardiography has witnessed several technical developments in imaging modalities and image analysis. One of the most recent has been the introduction of velocity-based strain-rate imaging and speckle tracking to quantify regional deformation.1 Coronary artery disease induces important changes in regional myocardial function. Both acute ischemia and chronic ischemia decrease regional wall motion and thickening. Despite recent technical developments in clinical cardiac imaging, the evaluation of regional radial and longitudinal function is often based on visual interpretation of wall motion. This is both qualitative and subjective. This paper discusses regional myocardial deformation and motion, studied in different (experimental) substrates of coronary artery disease, from acute ischemia to chronic infarction. It will be shown that regional deformation at rest, combined with observations during a dobutamine challenge, can uniquely discriminate the different ischemic substrates.