Cardiovascular Medicine

The Medical College of Wisconsin is pleased to announce the services of a dedicated Echocardiography Core Lab to support clinical research studies.

The Echo Core Lab is prepared to offer:

• Consultation to investigators that wish to consider including cardiac ultrasound imaging in their study design.
• Performance of echocardiograms for clinical trials, with data stored, analyzed and interpreted, or forwarded to another core lab as required by protocol.
• Assistance in developing customized ultrasound protocols for investigator initiated human or animal studies.
• Off-line analysis of echocardiograms that includes standard American Society of Echocardiography Guidelines and non-standard measurements.  Analysis also allows calculation of ventricular size and mass, ventricular function and wall motion scoring. 
• Standard Doppler of blood flow and tissue Doppler examinations can be performed.  Both Doppler 2D based (speckle tracking) strain measurements can be performed.
• Real time and full volume 3D image acquisition is available.  Global and segmental left ventricular function can be quantitatively assessed based on 3D images.
• Saline and left heart intravenous contrast agents as needed in research design. 
• Vascular imaging and IMT measurements are available.

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

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

The lab is available for any research project that requires echocardiography throughout MCW and the community. 

The Medical Director, Dr. Timothy Woods, is a Board Certified Cardiologist and Director of the Cardiac Ultrasound Lab at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital.

For more information please contact Leanne Harmann, RDCS, RDMS, RVT at lharmann@mcw.edu or 414-456-6817.

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