Preface

An integral part of clinical cardiology, echocardiography is becoming a routine examination for all cardiac patients. This is due to its role not only in diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, but also in clinical decision making, follow-ups and cardiac events prediction in these patients. Even though competitive imaging techniques have been developed in the last few decades, echocardiography with its techniques remains the gold standard of clinical examinations in cardiology.

The book *Echocardiography – In Specific Diseases* brings together contributions from well- known researchers from around the world, some of them specialized in imaging science in their clinical orientation, but also representatives from academic medical centers. Each chapter is structured and written to be accessible to those with a basic knowledge of echocardiography but also to be stimulating and informative to experts and researchers in the field of echocardiography. This book is primarily aimed at cardiology fellows during their basic echocardiography rotation, fellows of internal medicine, radiology and emergency medicine, but also experts in echocardiography.

During the past decades technological advancements in echocardiography have been developing rapidly, leading to improved echocardiographic imaging using new techniques, and the authors of this book acknowledge the most advanced techniques used today. The techniques described should be useful in research as well as daily clinical practice, not only for detecting different cardiac pathologies in different patients, but also with the purpose to contribute to clinical decision-making, as well as follow-ups and outcome predictions. An attempt has been made to explain the role of echocardiography in several special pathologies, which the readers may find in different chapters of the book.

Finally, we hope that next few years will bring even greater advances in this field, and that this book will motivate other scientists in further enhancing the techniques available. The intention is not that these new echo modalities are only implemented in daily practice, but that they are used for the development of new techniques so that a better assessment of heart structure and its function can contribute to better treatment. Readers of *Echocardiography – In Specific Diseases* will hopefully enjoy this book and find the information and expert opinions within very useful to their clinical practice, as well as their research work.

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I would like to thank all the authors for their valuable contributions. I would also like to thank the staff at InTech, particularly Gorana Scerbe who answered all of my questions and kept me on track during the entire process.
