REVIEW Intracardiac flow visualization: current status and future directions

Non-invasive cardiovascular imaging initially focused on heart structures, allowing the visualization of their motion and inferring its functional status from it. Colour-Doppler and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) have allowed a visual approach to intracardiac flow behaviour, as well as measuring its velocity at single selected spots. Recently, the application of new technologies to medical use and, particularly, to cardiology has allowed, throughdifferent algorithms inCMRand applicationsof ultrasound-related techniques, the description andanalysis of flow behaviour in all points and directions of the selected region, creating the opportunity to incorporate new data reflecting cardiac performance to cardiovas-cular imaging. The following review provides an overview of the currently available imaging techniques that enable flow visualization, as well as its present and future applications based on the available literature and on-going works