High frame rate ultrasound in heart disease assessment
Research type
Research Study
Full title
High frame rate contrast-enhanced ultrasound for the assessment of Ischaemic heart disease
IRAS ID
253354
Contact name
Ann Banfield
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
London North West University healthcare NHS Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 1 days
Research summary
Contrast-enhanced (CE) echocardiography is used to assess ischaemic heart disease. A contrast agent clarifies the outline of the endocardium or border of a suspected mass and leads to more confident assessment of wall thickening abnormalities at rest or during stress, in patients with suspected heart disease.
However, the accuracy of CE is limited to the quality of images achievable. Recent advances in ultrasound engineering have made it possible to achieve thousands of frames per second (FPS), compared to only 30-40 FPS offered by most commercially available imaging systems. High frame-rate (HFR) echocardiography can not only improve imaging resolution but also expand the application of CE echocardiography further, to include assessment of cardiac chamber and the flow of blood through the heart.
A feasibility study in healthy volunteers showed HFR CE improved contrast-to-noise ratio by 151% over conventional CE. Detection of contrast signal within the heart muscle and hence quantification of heart muscle perfusion was also feasible. We also successfully obtained information about the flow of blood within the heart chamber which was not possible with conventional CE.This study will extend our work to patients with confirmed ischaemic heart disease, to enable assessment of the accuracy and feasibility of the HFR CE technique. We propose studying 20 patients with confirmed ischaemic heart disease on prior echocardiography. We would also recruit 5 subjects who have a very low risk of heart disease as a control. The study will be conducted at the cardiology centre at Northwick Park Hospital. The study will only last 1 day for each participant, who will undergo 3 sets of 3 ultrasound scans both at rest and under stress using a drug called dipyridamole as an alternative to exercise to stress the heart. The use of this drug is standard in clinical stress echo protocols.
REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0624
Date of REC Opinion
4 Jul 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion