An international meeting of experts on Cardiovascular Imaging by Ultrasound was held in Aachen from 26-27 April, 1991. It provided new and interesting insights into what has already been achieved in ultrasound - based cardiovascular diagnosis and therapy and what will be introduced in clinical practice in the near future. Since the introduction of ultrasound in clinical practice in 1984 there has been no other physical principle that has added and will continue to add so much to clinical diagnosis and therapy. Echocardiography, once established as a non-invasive diagnostic tool, is...

Echocardiography has recently become one of' the most important techniques in clinical cardiology. The major advantage of this method is its noninvasive nature enabling us to apply it under a widespread variety of clinical conditions. In the late 1960s, when research and clinical application of echo cardiography were started, and during the first decade investigations were mainly focused on the morphology of the valves and the chambers of the heart. The introduction of two-dimensional echocardiography was a major breakthrough in visualizing different portions of the heart. How ever, the poor...

An international meeting of experts on Cardiovascular Imaging by Ultrasound was held in Aachen from 26-27 April, 1991. It provided new and interesting insights into what has already been achieved in ultrasound-based cardiovascular diagnosis and therapy and what will be introduced in clinical practice in the near future. Since the introduction of ultrasound in clinical practice in 1984 there has been no other physical principle that has added and will continue to add so much to clinical diagnosis and therapy. Echocardiography, once established as a non-invasive diagnostic...

This volume contains most of the invited lectures presented at the second "Interna- tional Symposium on the Evaluation of Cardiac Dynamics by Ultrasound" which was held on May 27-28, 1982, in Hamburg. Main topics of the symposium dealt with new echocardiographic technologies such as the transesophageal technique and digital image processing of echocardio- grams, as well as with latest clinical and experimental results in the fields of contrast and Doppler echocardiography, tissue characterization and analysis of left ventricular function. We are greatly indebted to all participants who kept a...