Automated assessment of noninvasive filling pressure using color Doppler M-mode echocardiography

The assessment of left-ventricular (LV) filling pressure usually requires invasive hemodynamic monitoring to follow the progression of a disease or the response to therapy. Previous investigations have shown accurate estimation of wedge pressure using non-invasive Doppler information obtained from the ratio of the wave propagation slope from color M-mode (CMM) images to the peak early diastolic filling velocity from transmitral Doppler images. This study reports an automated algorithm that derives an estimate of wedge pressure based on the spatiotemporal velocity distribution available from digital CMM Doppler images of LV filling.