Cardiovascular Center

The Medical College of Wisconsin offers a dedicated Echo Core Lab to support clinical and basic science research studies.

The Echo Core Lab offers:

• Consultation to investigators that wish to consider including cardiac or vascular ultrasound imaging in their study design.
• Performance of echocardiograms or vascular studies for clinical trials, with data stored, analyzed and interpreted or forwarded to a central core lab as required by protocol.
• Assistance in developing customized ultrasound protocols for human or small animal studies.
• Off-line analysis of echocardiograms that includes American Society of Echocardiography Guidelines and non-standard measurements.  Analysis also allows calculation of ventricular function with wall motion scoring, ventricular size and ventricular mass. 
• Standard Doppler of blood flow, tissue Doppler, Doppler based strain/strain rate and 2D (speckle) strain/torsion can be performed.
• Real time 3D and 3D electrocardiographic gated cardiac and vascular imaging with quantification of global and segmental left ventricular function.
• Ultrasound contrast studies including saline contrast for identification of intra or extra cardiac shunting and trans-pulmonary contrast agents for left ventricular opacification, myocardial perfusion imaging and vascular research. 
• Standard vascular imaging with pulsed-wave Doppler, color Doppler and automated IMT measurements.

The lab can offer a flexible range of service, ranging from assistance in acquiring human or animal images for investigator analysis, to a complete service that includes protocol design, image acquisition and analysis with presentation of data results to the investigator.

Core Lab personnel have experience with image acquisition and data analysis on multiple small animal species including: rats, mice, primates, rabbits and pigs.

The Echo Core Lab has access to two state of the art machines, including a Philips iE33 and General Electric Vivid 7 ultrasound systems. Separate Philips Focus workstation and GE Echopac workstations are used for off-line analysis.

The lab is available for any research project requiring cardiac or vascular ultrasound throughout MCW and the community. 

The MCW Echo Research Laboratory Medical Director, Timothy Woods, MD, is a Board Certified Cardiologist and Director of the Adult Cardiac Ultrasound Lab and the Valvular Heart Disease Clinic at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital.

For more information please contact:
Leanne M. Harmann, BA, RDCS, RDMS, RVT
Technical Director of the MCW Echocardiography Research Lab
414-456-6777

lharmann@mcw.edu

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