Monitoring heart valve disease by improving the reliability of echocardiography

The development and implementation of automated methods for the reproducible assessment of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation

People with moderately narrowed or leaky heart valves, mostly the mitral valve or aortic valve, need to have ultrasound scans to determine when they need an operation. But the technique used to monitor severity, called echocardiography, although accurate, is not always exactly reproducible. Factors affecting reproducibility include keeping the same probe position at each visit, and movement due to breathing, and natural fluctuation between heart beats. BHF Professor Darrel Francis from Imperial College London has received a grant to train a student, who has already been working closely with his team. The student will design, develop, and test advanced, yet cost-effective, techniques for measuring aortic and mitral valve narrowness and leakiness. They will automate these techniques and design a device that can plug into existing machines to enable operators to make the measurements more accurate. This will allow doctors to better monitor their patients and work out if their heart valves are getting worse and make judgements on the timing of surgery easier.