Tissue Doppler, a fundamental tool for parametric imaging

Tissue Doppler has been used for clinical applications since 1989. It has been developed from a pulsed Doppler acquisition tool towards a method where extraction of velocities can be performed from colour-coded images. This has introduced a further development into different forms of parametric images describing different myocardial functions as colour-coded information, like deformation imaging, motion imaging and phase imaging. The technical requirements have been established with temporal requirements of frame rates in acquisition exceeding 100 frames s(-1). The most powerful application of the tissue Doppler technique today is perhaps to quantify the myocardial functional reserve, during stress echocardiography, making the method applicable to diagnose the presence of coronary disease with an accuracy exceeding that of nuclear and other non-invasive techniques. The method has also great potential for future developments with introduction of more regional measuring variables.