Figure 3

Strain rate examples from two patients with myocardial infarction. Bull's eye, M-mode array and 3D surface display. Top half, inferior infarction (patient 2), showing slight systolic dyskinesia to hypokinesia – blue to light yellow – in the basal inferior and inferoseptal segments, hypokinesia in the inferior midwall. Post systolic shortening is shown over a larger area in the same region, visible on bull's eye (2) and M-mode. The 3D display is shown in mid-systole, the three frames illustrates the application's ability to rotate the display, here counter clockwise around the longitudinal axis. In addition is shown the strain rate curves from the infarct in red, demonstrating akinesia and post systolic shortening, and from a normal segment in green, showing normal systolic shortening with peak systolic strain rate of < -1 s^-1, and diastolic lengthening. Bottom half shows an anteroapical infarct (patient 6), with a small area of dyskinesia, surrounded by a larger area of hypokinesia. (A very small area of inverted colour due to angular distortion can be seen.) Again, the area of post systolic shortening is in the same region, but larger, the difference probably being the ischemic border zone. The 3D reconstruction, systole in the upper row, and early diastole in the lower row, is rotated from an anterior to an apical view. Faulty ECG trigging on the scanner can be seen by the ECG curves on this patient, showing that the reconstruction must be inhomogenous.