Segmental analysis of Color Kinesis: new echocardiographic technique for objective assessment of regional LV endocardial motion

Color Kinesis/sup TM/ (CK) is a new real-time echocardiographic technique based on tissue characterization, which uses frame-by-frame color encoding of pixel transitions from blood to myocardial tissue throughout systole to display endocardial motion in a single end-systolic frame. The authors developed user-friendly software for on-line segmental analysis of CK images which provides a variety of quantitative indices of magnitude and timing of regional endocardial motion. To date the authors have analyzed CK images obtained in 153 subjects in different protocols. These studies demonstrated that segmental analysis of CK images is an easy noninvasive method that allows objective evaluation of regional LV systolic function. As such, this method has significant clinical potential in the diagnosis of myocardial ischemia.