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iACardio, a Software company,
revolutionizes the practice of
evaluating “Ultrasound of the heart”
(“Echocardiography”).
Ultrasound
devices are being used increasingly in
many types of Point-of-Care locations,
including cardiology departments,
emergency rooms, rural medical
facilities, and even ambulances. In
the near future, even GPs will begin
using ultrasound devices. The medical
staffs at these Points of Care locations
find it difficult to evaluate the images
on the screen.
Coronary artery disease (CAD), the
most common cardiac disease, is
caused by atherosclerosis in the
coronary arteries, a condition which
causes a decrease in the blood supply
to the heart muscle. CAD may cause
an impairment of the cardiac muscle
function that significantly affects
the left ventricular systolic function
that performs as the main pump of
the heart. Accurate evaluation of
the left Ventricle (LV) function and
other parts of the heart is crucial for
correct patient diagnosis, treatment
decisions and prognosis assessment.
Ultrasound imaging of the heart,
or Echocardiography, is the most
widely used imaging technique for
evaluation of cardiac heart function.
Today, approximately 15 million echo
procedures are carried out worldwide
each year.
Over the past few years,
echocardiography systems have
begun to offer better and faster
imaging capabilities, coupled with
measurement tools intended to assist
with evaluation of heart function.
However, these tools are manual or
semi-automated, and are therefore
slow, cumbersome to use and error-
prone. For example, the evaluation
of LV function is done by subjective
“eyeballing” (just by looking) of the LV,
or by manually tracing the LV borders
on manually-selected frames. Both
techniques require the evaluator to
draw on vast echo experience in order
to achieve an accurate evaluation.
Manual tracing is both insufficiently
accurate and time consuming (taking
15-30 minutes to perform). Even the
semi-automatic measurements now
provided on high-end machines have
not proven to be sufficiently reliable.
Using the tools currently available
are limited in function evaluation.
Some of the other parameters such
as movements of ventricular wall
segments (17 singular areas), can
only be perform on most machines
through “eyeball”-based evaluation.
In contrast, DiACardio’s technology
enables a fully automatic dynamic
analysis of the heart in action,
including full automation of both
tracing and analysis processes -
performed in several second via a
single click of the mouse - across
the complete heart cycle. This is a
revolutionary improvement compared
D
DiACardio Ultrasound of the Heart
Shirley Mayzlish, New-Tech Europe Magazine
New-Tech Magazine Europe l 60