For Immediate Release
March 27, 1998

Dr. Harvey Feigenbaum Gives Keynote Address

INDIANAPOLIS--A pioneer in the development of ultrasound for the detection of heart disease and disorders, Harvey Feigenbaum, M.D., will be giving a keynote address on current developments in the use of echocardiography to thousands of cardiologists attending this year's American College of Cardiology annual meeting. His address, the Louis F. Bishop Lecture, will be Tuesday (March 31) at 2 p.m. EST in the World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Feigenbaum, a distinguished professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, will highlight several new advances that are still in technological development. Those underway in his laboratory at IUSM include "harmonic imaging" which will give physicians a totally different way of looking at human tissue. The IUSM team has been conducting studies with a prototype model and will present their findings during the ACC meeting. The technology eliminates background noise (typically found in standard ultrasound imaging) and provides a cleaner picture of cardiac muscle. This technical advance is particularly helpful in stress echo which was pioneered at IUSM. The high imaging technique is now available on several commercial echographs.

Digital techniques refined by the team at IUSM also will be discussed by Dr. Feigenbaum. "We have used digital recording of echocardiography for some years. This approach to the recording and display of ultra echocardiograms greatly enhances the utility and cost effectiveness of the cardiology tests."

Another important advance which is being investigated at IUSM is contrast echo. This technique involves injecting a liquid which circulates in the blood and can be seen on a echocardiogram. There have been several important recent breakthroughs in this field. "An exciting possible use for this technology is to record blood flow within the heart muscle," says Dr. Feigenbaum. "Now we can actually see how the muscle is functioning, how well it's taking up blood, to determine its state of health."

Other technologies under development which will be addressed by Dr. Feigenbaum include a small, hand-held ultrasound system that physicians can carry and use "much like we now use the stethoscope. We won't see this come into the clinic for another two years but we are very excited about it," says Dr. Feigenbaum. "It will truly be the stethoscope in its purest sense.

"All of this becomes more noteworthy when we consider that ultrasound is extremely cost effective, less expensive than any other diagnostic tests now used to define heart disease including angiography, the MRI, the CT and nuclear studies," he adds.

Contact: Pamela Perry
317-274-7722
pperry@iupui.edu

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