The Echo Core Lab at Mayo Clinic promotes optimal utilization of echocardiography in clinical investigations and practice. Rapid, reliable and reproducible

Backed by Mayo Clinic's wealth of experience and standing as the nation's foremost institution for cardiovascular diseases and echocardiography, our lab provides rapid, reliable and reproducible readings with unparalleled quality assurance.

Overview

The Echocardiography (Echo) Core Laboratory at Mayo Clinic provides independent, third-party interpretation of echocardiographic studies for clinical trials worldwide. Serving as a trusted research collaborator, the Echo Core Lab partners with trial investigators and industry sponsors to support studies that use echocardiography to determine patient eligibility or to evaluate study end points, or both.

Our lab offers a comprehensive range of services, including:

  • Measurements done by highly trained research sonographers.
  • Direct interpretation and overread by Mayo Clinic cardiologists.
  • Quality assurance for both clinical sites and lab staff.
  • Quick turnaround times.
  • Capacity to process and interpret thousands of studies.
  • Development of study-specific manuals, protocols and educational webinars.

The core mission of the Echo Core Lab is to ensure the optimal use of echocardiography in clinical research and practice.

Rapid, reliable, reproducible results

Drawing on Mayo Clinic's extensive expertise and global leadership in cardiovascular care and echocardiography, the Echo Core Lab delivers results that are rapid, reliable and reproducible, all with uncompromising quality assurance.

  • Rapid. With a dedicated team of physicians and sonographers, we deliver fast turnaround times, even for large-scale trials. Our infrastructure supports studies ranging from several hundred to several thousand echocardiographic exams, ensuring efficiency without sacrificing precision.
  • Reliable. As a world leader in echocardiography, Mayo Clinic performs more than 250 echocardiographic exams daily. Since its founding in 1999, the Echo Core Lab has contributed to more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications and has played a key role in developing international echocardiography guidelines. Regular quality assurance meetings ensure consistency and accuracy in measurements and interpretations.
  • Reproducible. Clinical trials require highly objective and verifiable imaging data. Our quality-control procedures enable consistent, reproducible results that investigators and the broader scientific community can trust as a solid foundation for research conclusions.

Echo Core Lab expertise

To provide reproducible and standardized echo measurements and analyses, only physicians and sonographers with extensive clinical echocardiography training and practice are invited to participate in the Echo Core Lab. These experts undergo formal training and education related to standardized echo measurement techniques and our core mission.

Our lab has participated in a wide range of clinical trials on such topics as:

  • Heart failure, including the Heart Failure Clinical Research Network trials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
  • Ischemic cardiomyopathy, including the Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Cardiomyopathy With Heart Failure (STICH) trial with the NIH and NHLBI.
  • Pulmonary hypertension, including the Pulmonary Vascular Complications of Liver Diseases trial with the NIH and NHLBI.
  • Rheumatoid arthritis with the NIH and National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS).
  • Transcatheter aortic valve replacement, including the Medtronic CoreValve U.S. Pivotal Trial.
  • Marfan syndrome, with the Marfan Foundation.
  • Mitral valve regurgitation.
  • Tricuspid valve regurgitation.
  • Mitral, aortic, tricuspid and pulmonary investigational replacement valves.
  • Implantable cardiac device testing.
  • Pharmaceutical testing.
  • Cardiotoxicity of chemotherapy agents.
  • Pericardial diseases.