The development and implementation of automated methods for echo
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The development and implementation of automated methods for the reproducible assessment of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation
IRAS ID
158223
Contact name
Darrel Francis
Contact email
Research summary
Over four-fifths of valve surgery is for aortic stenosis or mitral regurgitation. The main test determining timing of surgery is echocardiography, yet under scientific blinded conditions echocardiographic tests have very poor test-retest reproducibility. This severely limits their informativeness during patient’s years of regular surveillance, so that deterioration may only be detected when the patient is overwhelmingly symptomatic. Irreproducibility also prevents potential disease-modifying therapies being usefully tested with echocardiographic endpoints.
We will systematically develop technology to improve precision of clinical quantification of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation by combining advanced bioengineering and signal processing techniques and careful clinical experiments to isolate the sources of uncertainty so that the technical advances can be focussed where they are most needed. We will avoid lock-in to any equipment manufacturer, using our laboratory’s methods for extracting data vendor-independently.
We aim to provide clinicians and researchers with a device and associated software that can interface with existing echocardiographic machines and, with less scanning time, provide them with a quantitative measure of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation with a true (blinded) test-retest reproducibility twice a good as existing techniques, resistant to physiological state, and backed up by robust clinical and experimental data demonstrating validity.
REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/1520
Date of REC Opinion
5 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion