ABSTRACT
Ultrasound cardiography (UCG), or echocardiography, has been widely used as a noninvasive, safe, and reliable diagnostic tool in clinical medicine. A part of the ultrasound pulses produced by a piezoelectric transducer is reflected at several interfaces within the heart and returned to the transducer, where the reflected echoes are transformed into electrical impulses. By clarifying the internal structure of the heart through UCG signals of an M-mode display, can obtain various numerical values relating to the left ventricle, e.g., the length of the short axis, the velocity of circumferential fiber shortening, and the left ventricular volume. Two-dimensional echocardiograms, transferred directly from ultrasound diagnostic equipment or through a videotape recorder to a minicomputer system, are processed digitally, and certain cardiac functions can be obtained from them. For on line image processing and analysis of the motion of the heart in a short time, need real-time digitization of echocardiograms and a sufficient amount of storage of digitized data.
