Reproducibility and Intervendor Agreement of Left Ventricular Global Systolic Strain in Children Using a Layer-Specific Analysis.

Background: Speckle-tracking strain analysis provides additive data to the assessment of pediatric and congenital heart disease; however, the variety of strain analysis software platforms by different vendors and the lack of data on intervendor strain agreement in children have limited its utility. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the intervendor agreement of strain on two commonly used analysis platforms in pediatrics by layer of myocardium and data compression.

Methods: This prospective study analyzed two-dimensional speckle-tracking strain on two software platforms in 53 children with normal cardiac segmental anatomy and varying function. Three standard apical views and one parasternal short-axis view were exported at their acquired frame rates to workstations with GE EchoPAC and TomTec software and then also to TomTec at compressed frame rates. Both software platforms had been updated with European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging/American Society of Echocardiography Task Force recommendations for left ventricular (LV) global strain. Intravendor and intervendor agreement between layer-specific comparisons were assessed using Bland-Altman analysis (limits of agreement and bias) and intraclass correlation coefficients.

Results: This study included subjects with normal LV function (n = 38) and cardiomyopathy (n = 15) with an age range of 1 month to 18 years. Intertechnique agreement by default vendor myocardial layer (GE mid-TomTec endocardial layer) was robust for both global longitudinal (GLS) and circumferential strain (GCS; higher for GLS than GCS). Intravendor (inter- and interreader) agreement was slightly higher than intervendor. Only small differences in intraclass correlation coefficients were present between various myocardial layers and acquired versus compressed TomTec data with narrow limits of agreement and small bias except in certain subgroup comparisons.

Conclusions: Comparison of LV GLS and GCS between two commonly used software platforms after European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging/American Society of Echocardiography Industry Task Force recommendations demonstrated good to excellent agreement in pediatrics, regardless of the layer of analysis or the image format, although some degree of variability remains between vendor platforms. Overall, GLS agreement was more robust than GCS, and this difference is exaggerated in specific subanalyses. These data suggest that comparisons of strain values obtained on these two vendors will be reasonable, but caution should be used when the indication is the detection of small differences between serial echocardiograms.