Dual Doppler echocardiography

Dual Doppler echocardiography

Dual Doppler echocardiography is the technique of simultaneously recording Doppler signals of two types. This technique is used for recording left ventricular filling (E wave) and e’ (mitral annular tissue Doppler) simultaneously. This technique has been found to be useful in atrial fibrillation because it prevents the confounding of E/e’ ratio due to beat to beat variability in atrial fibrillation. Conventionally E and e’ are separately measured and the ratio calculated. But this can lead to error in atrial fibrillation with widely varying cycle lengths which can alter the ventricular relaxation properties depending on the filling obtained in the preceding cycle. In dual Doppler echocardiography, the transmitted pulses are split into two and transmission/reception cycles are operated at two different points so that simultaneous data acquisition is possible from two different points in two different modes (conventional blood flow targeting Doppler and tissue Doppler) [1].

Reference

  1. Kusunose K, Yamada H, Nishio S, Tomita N, Niki T, Yamaguchi K, Koshiba K, Yagi S, Taketani Y, Iwase T, Soeki T, Wakatsuki T, Akaike M, Sata M. Clinical utility of single-beat E/e’ obtained by simultaneous recording of flow and tissue Doppler velocities in atrial fibrillation with preserved systolic function. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging. 2009 Oct;2(10):1147-56.