Pulmonary hypertension may occur in the fetus in the presence of constriction of the ductus arteriosus. The feasibility of detection and quantitation of fetal ductal constriction by Doppler echocardiography was assessed in an animal preparation in which ductal constriction was created in the fetal lamb with a variable ligature causing varying degrees of fetal pulmonary hypertension (fetal pulmo...

In the last decade 3D and live 3D ultrasound or the so called 4D (3D/4D) in examination of the fetal heart evolved very rapidly with the development of the new technique called Spatiotemporal Image Corelation - STIC, which enables the aquisition of a volume data concomitent with the beating heart. It appears that 3D/4D ultrasound in fetal echocardiography may make an important contribution to t...

The rapid continuing development of 3-dimensional ultrasound imaging technologies has extended capabilities of fetal cardiac scanning beyond 2-dimensional imaging technologies and now provides a wide array of analytic possibilities. The acquisition of the 3D volume information is based on initial application of 2-dimensional imaging techniques including grey scale, Doppler, Power Doppler and B-...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of color and bidirectional power Doppler ultrasound combined with Fetal Intelligent Navigation Echocardiography (FINE) in examining the fetal heart. METHODS A prospective cohort study was conducted of fetuses in the second and third trimesters with a normal heart or with congenital heart disease (CHD). One or more spatiotemporal image correlation (STIC) v...

INTRODUCTION Fetal endocardial fibroelastosis (EFE) is a kind of rare fetal cardiac malformation characterized by the diffuse thickening of the ventricular endocardium. The diagnosis of fetal EFE depends on the echocardiographic features which are still confused that how to make an appropriate pregnant decision due to the conflict between high prenatal mortality and acceptable prognosis once af...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this presentation is to review some of the common and rare fetal heart abnormalities and to provide an easy approach to these findings with schematic drawings. METHODS Over the past 10 years, we collected cases in which the common views of the heart were abnormal and the differential diagnoses that existed for each. This presentation shows the normal sonographic sections...