Delays in image processing, which may be no more than a few seconds, allow computing engines built into scanners to do some powerful processing. The Voluson 530 D Digital Volume Sonography system from Medison acquires a volume of data that can be sliced in planes, which is otherwise difficult if not impossible to achieve. Harmonic imaging is offered as an option. The system, built into the company's flagship Sonoline Elegra, also measures tissue structures. Instantaneously capturing the beating heart at stop-action speeds would dramatically reduce exam time and improve the diagnostic value of the data.
Interactive capabilities allow retrospective multiview analysis of the heart.
Three-D echocardiography is especially suited to imaging the fetal heart, which for obvious reasons is not a candidate for nuclear medicine or cardiac cath. Four scans, lasting just 1.5 seconds and acquiring 20 volumes per second, were obtained for each fetal heart and stored for off-line analysis. Off-line reconstructions allowed the heart to be slowed, stopped, or viewed at its original speed. The researchers consistently visualized most structures and views, as well as cardiac function, and they could readily detect abnormal structures. But the goal here is not really technology-it's to obtain better visualization of particular entities.