Side-by-side viewing of anatomically aligned left ventricular segments in three-dimensional stress echocardiography.

Background: Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) suffers from high interobserver and inter-institution variability in the diagnosis of myocardial ischemia. Therefore, we developed a three-dimensional (3D) analysis tool that makes it possible to anatomically align 3D rest and stress data systematically, to generate optimal, nonforeshortened standard anatomical cross sections and to analyse the images synchronized and side-by-side.

Aim Of The Study: To investigate whether this 3D analysis tool could improve interobserver agreement on myocardial ischemia during 3D DSE.