Intracardiac echocardiography during interventional and electrophysiological cardiac catheterization.

Just as the growing interest and proliferation of methods to reperfuse the coronary artery system with transcatheter techniques spurred interest and utilization of intracoronary ultrasound (at least in academic centers), so the growth of anatomic cardiac transcatheter interventions and increasingly aggressive transcatheter ablative strategies to treat cardiac arrhythmias has stimulated the use of and development of new methods for intracardiac echocardiography (ICE). This article will review the development, present state of the art, and applications of ICE as well as project its evolution from 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional/4-dimensional visualization and integration of therapy with imaging in the near future.