Left ventricular dimensions and mass measurement from 3D echocardiography: are we there yet?
Authors: Quill G , Zhao D , Gilbert K , Wang VY , Legget ME , Ruygrok PN , Doughty RN , Young AA , Nash MP 
Published: February 2022

Funding Acknowledgements

Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): Health Research Council (HRC) of New Zealand and National Heart Foundation (NHF) of New Zealand

Introduction—Echocardiographic measures of left ventricular (LV) structure and size, including LV wall thickness and LV end-diastolic dimension (LVID), provide important information in the assessment of patients with heart disease. For example, LV mass is a predictor of outcome for patients with hypertension and LVID is a predictor of cardiac resynchronisation response in patients with heart failure. Advances in 3D echocardiography (3DE) have enabled full-volume acquisitions, which overcome geometric assumptions present in conventional 2D echocardiography (2DE), providing a more accurate representation of cardiac geometry. Although numerous validation studies have been performed for 3DE-derived LV volumes, comparisons of LV dimension by 3DE against established methods are limited.

Purpose—We sought to compare routine LV dimension measurements between 3DE and 2DE, with validation using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging.

Methods—Transthoracic echocardiography (2D and 3D) and cine CMR imaging were performed in 62 prospectively recruited participants (47 healthy controls, 9 patients with LVH, 6 patients with aortic regurgitation), &lt;1 h apart. 2DE LV dimension measurements (interventricular septum [IVS], posterior wall thickness [PWT], and LVID) were taken at end-diastole from the parasternal long axis, and mass was calculated using the linear method based on ASE/EACVI guidelines. For 3DE, 3D geometric models of the LV were constructed by interactively fitting surfaces to the endocardium and epicardium using previously validated software, from which corresponding LV dimension measurements and mass were extracted. Measurements were obtained from CMR by a similar 3D geometric modelling process.

Results—Differences (mean ± SD) in LV dimension measurements between the three modalities and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) are presented in Table I. When compared with CMR, 3DE exhibited higher agreement in terms of LVID and mass than 2DE, but lower agreement in wall thickness measurements. Statistically significant differences were found between 2DE and 3DE for PWT, LVID, and mass, as well as 2DE and CMR for LVID and mass (where P &lt; 0.01 for a paired sample t­-test, marked with an asterisk). Meanwhile, there were no statistically significant differences between 3DE and CMR for IVS, PWT, LVID, or mass.

Conclusions—Our results demonstrate that 3DE is superior to 2DE in terms of LVID and mass quantification, exhibiting good agreement with CMR. 3DE exhibited moderate and poor agreement for IVS and PWT, respectively, with both 2DE and CMR, likely due to the lower spatial resolution of 3DE. Further advances in 3DE image quality and analysis tools are therefore needed to improve accuracy of wall thickness measurements. Since 2DE imaging plane and probe positioning can result in oblique measurement and underestimation of LVID, the assessment of LVID and mass by 3DE is likely to lead to more accurate diagnostic and prognostic outcomes. Abstract Table 1