3D/4D Echocardiography—STIC

Abstract

Abstract Fetal cardiac screening is an obligation for everybody performing prenatal ultrasound. The heart, as a small and always moving object, is still the most difficult part of the fetal anatomy evaluation. Knowing this, different methods of improving antenatal screening for congenital heart defects (CHD) were introduced. Spatial temporal image correlation (STIC) is the newest one. Its target was to automatic acquisition of the fetal scan from the abdomen, through 4 chamber view toward the three vessel view and off-line analysis of the anatomy of the fetal cardiovascular system. Is that really possible? Does STIC improve screening of CHD? Would it be helpful in the more precise diagnosis of complicated heart defects? These are still the open questions, which will be discussed in the article.