RESEARCH ARTICLE
Calculation of Left Ventricular Relaxation Time Constant-Tau in Humans by Continuous-Wave Doppler
Xufang Bai*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 9
Last Page: 11
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-2-9
DOI: 10.2174/1874192400802010009
Article History:
Received Date: 24/10/2007Revision Received Date: 20/11/2007
Acceptance Date: 29/12/2007
Electronic publication date: 25/4/2008
Collection year: 2008

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Left ventricular relaxation time constant, Tau, is the best index to evaluate left ventricular diastolic function, but the measurement is only available traditionally in catheter lab. In Echo lab, several methods of non-invasive measurement of Tau have been tried since 1992, however almost all the methods are still utilizing the same formula to calculate Tau as in catheter lab, which makes them inconvenient, time-consuming and sometimes not very accurate. Based on Weiss’ formula and simplified Bernoulli’s equation, a simple method is developed by pure mathematical derivative to calculate Tau by continuous-wave Doppler in patients with mitral regurgitation.