Cardiac ultrasound has rapidly developed into one of the most important clinical methods for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with heart disease and has changed the practice of cardiology permanently. In addition to improving image quality, most of the progress relies on digital image acquisition, storage, and quantitative analysis equipment. Automatic endocardial detection and three dimensional reconstruction are now being developed. The progress with contrast echocardiography for myocardial perfusion imaging and results with tissue characterization is slow, but ever increasing,...