Analysis ofDoppler Ultrasound Outflow Profiles fortheDetection ofchanges inCardiac Function

inflow (mitral valve) andoutflow (aortic valve) are obtained, whichmaybeimportant fordiagnosis. In Detecting changes inthecontractility oftheheart current practice, continuous wave Doppler outflow muscle, especially inthepresence ofcoronary artery traces aremainly usedtoassess apotential pressure disease, isanimportant medical taskFromisolated gradient acrosstheaortic valveresulting froma myocytes, itwas sugested thatchronic ischemia narrowing ofthevalve. Itwas also shownthat severe d butpong ct o A 7 aortic stenosis showsnotonly higher butoften also decreases butprolongs contraction. Additionally, roogdotlw .eoiis[] severeaortic stenosis showshigher butoften p prolonged outflow velocities. From this, we Fromtheseobservations, we hypothesize that the hypothesize thatthere isa correlation between the profile oftheaortic outflow velocities might provide morphology oftheaortic outflow velocity profile and information on global myocardial function [6]. myocardial function. Totest this hypothesis, we(semi- Outflow velocities represent thepressure gradient ) * 77 7 7 * between LV andaortaandarethusinfluenced by automatically analyzed continuous waveDoppler ete fte.Adnmclyicesn eitnei aortic outflow traces from112individuals. Thetraces were segmented anda set of morphologyfeatures thevessel tree, ascould beexpected inthepresence of weresegmentedl andl asetofmorphology features atol reue laevlcte.wiearlne wereextracted. Areasunder ROC curvewereused as ph gy,r g a measureofquality ofeachfeature fordetectingdevelopment ofcontractile forcebythemyocardium changes incardiacfunction related tocoronary artery should showasanincrease inlate velocities. Thus, we disease. Signal analysis hasshownthatthe assume a relationship between themorphology and probabilistic distributions ofthevarious features are duration ofaortic outflow velocities andmyocardial different fornormalindividuals andpatients with function. ongoing disease.-This result showsthat aortic outflow Tostudy this relation andits usefulness toprovide profie s prmati socardiac funtio and diagnostic clinical information, we propose a novel