Characterization of Heart Dynamics in Echocardiography

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. In 2019, it was estimated that 32% of all deaths globally were due to this cause. This happens at national level, according to the colombian National Institute of Health (Instituto Nacional de Salud de Colombia - INS), this is the first cause of death with a 23.5% of all deaths in the country. In order to diagnose the cardiovascular disease, the echocardiography images are the first choice. This technique allows to evaluate the cardiac structures and its function in most of clinical environments. Echocardiography imaging has several modalities that by taking advantage of key principles of ultrasound, as Doppler imaging and speckle tracking techniques, allows to assess the blood flow in key points, as well as the motion of the cardiac muscle. Besides the different imaging techniques, from echocardiography, it is possible to obtain different measurements to perform a complete assessment: ventricular walls thickness, cardiac chamber dimensions, ventricular volumes, blood flow velocities and ejection fraction. Nevertheless, this techniques are devised to observe muscular and blood features separately.

Given these reasons and remembering that the cardiac function is dependant on interactions between tissues of different characteristics (blood and muscle), This work aims to explore the cardiac function in terms of the dynamic interaction between these tissues, since it may provide complementary information to the current cardiac indicators.