The anatomy of the heart in the sonogram. A comparison between anatomic and ultrasonic cross-section.

Abstract

Cardiac sonography has only recently been introduced as a diagnostic procedure. In order to facilitate the interpretation and evaluation of the ultrasonic cardiac cross-section displayed by this two-dimensional technique, we performed anatomic cross-sections corresponding to ultrasonic cross-sections. The ultrasonic cross-sectional images were taken from children with a real-time-motion scanner. The anatomic cross-sections were taken from adult hearts. Two ultrasonic transverse cross-sections are compared with the two corresponding anatomic cross-sections and three ultrasonic longitudinal cross-sections with one corresponding anatomic cross-section. The direct comparison between anatomic and ultrasonic cross-sections best promotes the understanding of the latter: such a comparison shows certain gaps of information in the ultrasonic display, mostly due to the physical prerequisites of the technique. Morphological details, therefore, should be interpreted with great care. In spite of these disadvantages, sonography is the only non-invasive method that provides an exact analysis of the heart's structure. In addition to this, the real-time-motion technique allows observation of the movements of cardiac structures.