Francesco Fulvio Faletra • Gila Perk
Natesa G. Pandian • Hans-Joachim Nesser
Itzhak Kronzon

2014

Advances in technology and human skill have made possible percutaneous catheter-based procedures for a wide spectrum of structural heart disease. Today, so-called interventional cardiology has gained full acceptance in the cardiac community. A growing number of structural heart diseases that would have required open heart surgery over the past two decades can now be safely treated using percutaneous catheter-based procedures. Traditionally, guidance of catheter-based procedures uses fluoroscopy and two-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (2D TEE). Both of these imaging techniques have significant limitations. Fluoroscopy is limited both by 2D projection of a complex three-dimensional (3D) heart and lack of precise delineation of soft structures.