Myocardial volume change during cardiac cycle derived from three orthogonal systolic strains: towards a quality assessment of strains.

Background: The relative modification of the myocardial volume between end-systole and end-diastole ( ) has already been assessed with different methods and falls in a range of 0.9-0.97 (mean value = 0.93).

Purpose: To estimate from the three longitudinal ( , circumferential ( ), and radial ( ) strains of the left ventricle using the formula: and to test whether this estimate of can be used as a marker of the echocardiography quality.

Material And Methods: Two hundred manuscripts, including a total of 34,690 patients or healthy volunteers, were identified in the Medline database containing values of , , and measured from echocardiography.

Results: The median value of was 0.93, in accordance with the literature, with no significant difference between patients or healthy volunteers ( P = 0.38). The proportion of studies with was 79%. When only considering groups of healthy volunteers, the studies failing this test had higher standard deviations for the three individual strains: 0.038 vs. 0.029 ( P = 0.02) for ; 0.060 vs. 0.034 ( P < 10) for , and 0.243 vs. 0.101 ( P < 10) for .

Conclusion: The median ratio of the left ventricular myocardial volumes between end-systole and end-diastole in the investigated studies was . The formula could be used to detect studies with inaccurate strain measurements.