High Resolution Speckle Tracking Dobutamine Stress Echocardiography Reveals Heterogeneous Responses in Different Myocardial Layers: Implication for Viability Assessments

Dobutamine stress influences ET strain differently in the various axes and layers of the myocardium and only partially in correspondence to tissue flow. Longitudinal and circumferential functional reserve opens the potential for the specific detection of midsubendocardial viable tissue by high-resolution STE.