New method of on-line quantification of regional wall motion with automated segmental motion analysis

Quantification of regional left ventricular dyssynchrony by magnetic resonance imaging

Cardiac resynchronization therapy is an established treatment in patients with symptomatic heart failure and intraventricular conduction delay. Electrical dyssynchrony is typically adopted to represent myocardial activation dyssynchrony, which should be compensated by cardiac resynchronization therapy. One third of the patients, however, does not respond to the therapy. Therefore, imaging modalities aimed at the mechanical dyssynchrony estimation have been recently proposed to improve patient selection criteria. This paper presents a novel fully automated method for regional mechanical left ventricular dyssynchrony quantification in short-axis magnetic resonance imaging. The endocardial movement is described by time-displacement curves with respect to an automatically determined reference point. Different methods are proposed for time-displacement curve analysis aimed at the regional contraction timing estimation. These methods were evaluated in two groups of subjects with (nine patients) and without (six patients) left bundle branch block. The contraction timing standard deviation showed a significant increase for left bundle branch block patients with all the methods. A novel method based on phase spectrum analysis may be however preferred due to a better specificity (99.7%) and sensitivity (99.0%). In conclusion, this method provides a valuable prognostic indicator for heart failure patients with dyssynchronous ventricular contraction and it opens new possibilities for regional timing analysis.

[Stunned myocardium]

BACKGROUND

Stunned myocardium is a state of delayed recovery of regional contractility after a transient period of ischemia followed by reperfusion.

CASE REPORT

A 67-year-old patient was admitted to our hospital with acute anterior myocardial infarction, and treated using percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) within acute disease stage. Reversible myocardial dysfunction persisted after ischemia following the return of normal perfusion. Abnormal resting wall motion with augmentation of contractility at low and high doses of dobutamine characterizes the stunned myocardium and reflects the normal blood flow reserve, characteristic for these postischemic, reperfused segments. SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography) with Tc 99 and dipyradamole showed normalization of perfusion defects in the apical region. There months after the infarction and PTCA, contractility was almost completely recovered.

CONCLUSION

Stunned myocardium recovery lasted from few weeks to few months. Control ultrasonography as well as SPECT showed normalization of systolic function of the left ventricle in the viable segments registered at previous examinations.

Cardiac image segmentation for contrast agent videodensitometry

Indicator dilution techniques are widely used in the intensive care unit and operating room for cardiac parameter measurements. However, the invasiveness of current techniques represents a limitation for their clinical use. The development of stable ultrasound contrast agents allows new applications of the indicator dilution method. Ultrasound contrast agent dilutions permit an echographic noninvasive measurement of cardiac output, ejection fraction, and blood volumes. The indicator dilution curves are measured by videodensitometry of specific regions of interest and processed for the cardiac parameter assessment. Therefore, the major indicator dilution imaging issue is the detection of proper contrast videodensitometry regions that maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the measured indicator dilution curves. This paper presents an automatic contour detection algorithm for indicator dilution videodensitometry. The algorithm consists of a radial filter combined with an outlier correction. It maximizes the region of interest by excluding cardiac structures that act as interference to the videodensitometric analysis. It is fast, projection independent, and allows the simultaneous detection of multiple contours in real time. The system is compared to manual contour definition on both echographic and magnetic resonance images.

Sensitive method of detecting myocardial ischemia during dobutamine stress echocardiography

To test the hypothesis that dobutamine-induced myocardial ischemia causes early-systolic asynchrony predominantly in the regional left ventricular wall, color kinesis (CK) images during dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) were recorded in 13 patients with coronary artery disease and in 10 patients without, all of whom showed normal wall motion at rest. Based on the visual interpretation of DSE and the angiographic findings, 21 segments in the short-axis images at the papillary muscle level were defined as ischemic, and 60 segments of the patients without coronary artery disease were defined as normal. The incremental fractional segmental area change (IFAC) was calculated at 33-ms intervals from the CK images. At the peak dose, IFACs during the first 33 and 33-67 ms were significantly lower in the ischemic segments than in the normal ones, and IFACs during 133-167, 200-233 and 233-267 ms were significantly higher in the ischemic segments. The ratio (peak/low dose) of the cumulative fractional area change at 100 ms gave the best sensitivity (= specificity) for differentiating the 2 groups (86%). Dobutamine-induced ischemia is characterized by an early-systolic asynchrony rather than a change in overall wall excursion and CK can provide an objective assessment of ischemia developing during DSE.

Effect of dobutamine on regional diastolic left ventricular asynchrony in patients with left ventricular hypertrophy

Dobutamine improves systolic as well as diastolic function, but its effect on left ventricular (LV) asynchrony is unknown. An on-line automated segmental motion analysis (A-SMA) system was developed, based on an automatic border detection technique, to evaluate the effect of dobutamine on LV asynchrony in patients with LV hypertrophy (LVH). Low dose (5 microg x kg (-1) x min(-1)) dobutamine stress echocardiography was performed in 15 patients with LVH and in 15 healthy subjects. Short-axis LV views were obtained and divided into 4 wedge-shaped segments using A-SMA. The time - area curve and its first derivative curve in each segment were displayed. Total normalized peak filling rates (nPFR) were obtained. Systolic and diastolic asynchronies were assessed from the coefficient of variation (CV) of the regional time intervals from end diastole to the peak ejection rate (T-PER), and from end systole to the peak filling rate (T-PFR), respectively. At baseline, the CV of T-PER and T-PFR in patients with LVH were greater than those in healthy subjects (CV-T-PER: 18.8+/-9.2 vs 9.6+/-4.3%, CV-T-PFR: 19.5+/-7 vs 8.1+/-4.1%, both p<0.01). During dobutamine infusion, differences among groups at baseline disappeared and systolic and diastolic asynchronies improved (CV-T-PER: 7.3+/-4.8 vs 5.7+/-2.1%, CV-T-PFR: 6.8+/-3.5 vs 5.1+/-1.3%, both p>0.05). Total nPFR increased (from 3.2+/-1.0 /s to 5.6+/-1.3 /s, p<0.01) with dobutamine infusion in patients with LVH. Dobutamine improved LV diastolic asynchrony, as evaluated by A-SMA, in patients with LVH demonstrating that the lusitropic effect of dobutamine improved LV regional diastolic asynchrony, playing an important role in the improvement of global LV diastolic filling.