Automated three-dimensional echocardiographic quantification for left ventricular volume and function in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Background: Accurate, reproducible, noninvasive determination of left ventricular (LV) volumes and ejection fraction (EF) is important for clinical assessment, selection of therapy, and serial monitoring of patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Current clinical Two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE) may cause inaccurate measurements in patients with HCM because of their asymmetric ventricles and limitations of 2DE technology. Three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) have demonstrated significantly greater accuracy. However, the time-consuming workflow limits the clinical utility of 3DE.

Aim: We aim to compare the performance of a novel automated 3DE system (HeartModel, Philips Healthcare) with 2DE in a group of patients with HCM. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) was reference standard.

Methods: Fifty-three patients with HCM were examined by automated 3DE (3DEA), two-dimensional biplane Simpson's method (2DBP), manual 3DE method, and CMR, respectively. For patients with poor automated quantification, manual correction was performed. The Pearson correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman analysis and paired Student t tests were used to assess inter-technique agreement.

Results: 3DEA measurements with contour editing correlate well with CMR and manual 2DE and 3DE measurements (r = .80-.96). The analysis time of 3DEA was shorter than that of 2DBP (3DEA, 141 ± 15s; 2DBP, 174 ± 17 s). Inter-observer variability was reduced significantly with use of 3DEA.

Conclusion: Compared with current clinical 2DBP method, the analysis time of automated 3DE was much shorter with the added benefit of enhanced accuracy and reproducibility. Patients with asymmetric chamber may rely more on the timesaving automated 3DE quantification in the future.