Theoretical Analysis of a Technique for the Characterization of Myocardium Contraction Based Upon Temporal Correlation of Ultrasonic Echoes

The temporal correlation properties of ultrasonic echoes from contracting myocardium are investigated theoretically. Myocar- dium is modeled as a dense suspension of moving particles, with time- varying scattering amplitudes. Single scattering is assumed. Echoes from different particles are added coherently. The variance of particle velocity is proposed as an indicator of contractile performance. It is shown how this parameter may be extracted from the average corre- lation of pairs of echoes arising from separate ultrasound pulses. An experiment is performed in which a manufactured target with known motion characteristics is interrogated using a commercial medical ul- trasound scanner. The experimental results are found to be in good agreement with theory. Finally, practical considerations for perform- ing and interpreting these measurements in human myocardium are discussed. EVERAL INVESTIGATIONS have demonstrated that it may be possible to evaluate cardiac contractile per- formance accurately with ultrasound. One technique in- volves the measurement of the frequency average of the intensity of ultrasonic echoes emanating from myocar- dium. Echo intensity has been found to vary throughout the cardiac cycle in normal canine myocardium, with the maximum level occurring at end-diastole and the mini- mum at end-systole ( l), (2). In addition, the magnitude of this effect has a regional dependence throughout the heart, with areas of greater contractile activity exhibiting greater amplitudes of variation (3). The extent of the cyclic variation of echo intensity has also been observed to drop significantly in canine myocardium making a tran- sition from normal to ischemic 141. Thus the magnitude of cyclic variation may be interpreted as a measure of contractile performance. A second technique entails quantitative analysis of video images of the heart produced by ultrasound scan-