Tissue Doppler

Tissue Doppler  Imaging (TDI) is an echocardiographic technique used to quantitatively assess cardiac function by measuring the movement of the heart muscle using both color and pulsed Doppler.

As we know, Doppler is typically used to assess blood flow.  However, recall that any tissue movement will also produce Doppler shifts.  Thus Doppler can also be used to assess the motion of tissue.

In contrast to the Doppler shifts from moving blood, the Doppler shifts from moving tissue produce lower magnitude (low kilohertz) but higher amplitude (stronger) Doppler shifts.

Therefore, to detect these shifts Tissue Doppler uses a low pass filter which removes the higher magnitude shifts from blood and only processes the lower Doppler shifts from moving tissue.

Common uses of TDI in echocardiography include the analysis of:

• diastolic dysfunction 

• left ventricular systolic function

• right ventricular function

• restrictive and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies

Here is a short video I created to give you an introduction to Tissue Doppler

Further detail is beyond the scope of this course, but if you'd like more information, here is a good reference:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.105.579268