New generation 3-dimensional echocardiography for left ventricular volumetric and functional measurements: Comparison with cardiac magnetic resonance

Aims: Non-invasive assessment of left ventricular (LV) structure and function is important in the evaluation of cardiac patients. This study was designed to test the accuracy and reproducibility of new generation 3-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) in measuring volumetric and functional LV indices as compared with current "gold standard" of non-invasive cardiac imaging, cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR). Methods and results: Sixty-four subjects with good acoustic windows, including 40 cardiac patients with LV ejection fraction (EF) < 45%, 14 patients with EF > 45% and 10 normal volunteers underwent 3DE using a commercially available PhilipsSonos 7500 scanner equipped with a matrix phase-array x4 xMATRIX transducer, and CMR on a 1.5 T Signa CV/i scanner (GE Medical Systems). Volumetric assessment was performed with analytical 4D-LV-Analysis software (TomTec) for 3DE and MRI-Mass software (Medis) for CMR. We found no significant differences in LV end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV) and EF with excellent correlations between the indices measured using 3DE and CMR (r = 0.97, r = 0.98, and r = 0.94, respectively). Bland-Altman analysis showed bias of 7 ml for EDV, 3 ml for ESV and -1% for EF with 3DE with corresponding limits of agreement (2SD) of 28 ml, 22 ml and 10%, respectively. Intraobserver and interobserver variabilities were for EDV: 3% and 4% (3DE) vs 2% and 2% (CMR), for ESV: 3% and 6% (3DE) vs 2% and 3% (CMR), and for EF: 4% and 4% (3DE) vs 2% and 4% (CMR), respectively. Conclusion: New generation 3DE provides accurate and reproducible quantification of LV volumetric and functional data in subjects with good acoustic windows as compared with CMR. (C) 2005 The European Society of Cardiology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.