Echocardiography

Abstract

Although ultrasound medical English shares with multidetector CT, Cardiac magnetic resonance, and cardiac nuclear medicine, many anatomical and pathophysiological terms, the terminology regarding technical aspects of each imaging modality is so different that an ultrasonographer can find difficult to understand the technical nuances of a talk on MDCT, CMR, or cardiac nuclear medicine, even in his/her own native tongue. The concept of “pitch,” for example, is something as simple for a cardiologist doing CT as the term “double inversion recovery” for a cardiologist doing MR, but it is likely that many cardiologists who are not doing either multislice CT or cardiac MR are not familiar with these terms. CT, MR, and nuclear medicine terminology is out of the scope of this manual, and we focus on echocardiography because it is precisely in this real-time, non-invasive imaging modality where the cardiologists must communicate directly with patients. CT and MR terminology is extensively covered in the book Radiological English (R. Ribes, P. Ros, 2007, Springer Publishing, ISBN: 3540293280).