Comparison of a new methodology for the assessment of 3D myocardial strain from volumetric ultrasound with 2D speckle tracking

Abstract

An alternative approach to extract 3D myocardial strain based on elastic registration of the ultrasound images (3DSE) was developed by our lab. The aim of the present study was to test its clinical performance by comparing strain values obtained by 3DSE with the ones obtained with 2D speckle tracking (2DST). Standard 2D B-mode and volumetric datasets were acquired in 12 patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and in 12 control subjects. Longitudinal (ε(LL)), circumferential (ε(CC)) and radial (ε(RR)) strain values were obtained from 2D datasets using commercially available 2DST software and from volumetric datasets using the 3DSE approach. 3DSE provided lower strain values than 2DST. With both approaches global ε(LL) and ε(CC) were significantly lower in patients with CHD than in controls. Global ε(LL) and ε(CC) correlated well between both methods (R = 0.83, R = 0.86, respectively), while segmental correlations were moderate [R = 0.63 (ε(LL)), R = 0.41 (ε(CC))]. The highest differences in ε(LL) values obtained by the two methods and the highest number of erroneous ε(LL) with 3DSE were observed in the basal LV segments. This study shows that in real-life datasets our 3DSE method provides global and regional ε(LL) and ε(CC) values that are comparable with the ones obtained from 2DST, even though they are not interchangeable with each other. As only a single acquisition is required, 3D methods may offer advantages over the current 2D techniques. However, the accuracy of the 3DSE can still be improved by solving the problems that appear with deformation estimation in the basal segments.

Assessment of Biventricular Function by Three-Dimensional Speckle-Tracking Echocardiography in Secondary Mitral Regurgitation after Repair with the MitraClip System

“…Our study is in agreement with previous studies showing that 3D STE provides global and regional 30,32,33 longitudinal and circumferential strain values that are comparable with the ones obtained on 2D STE. Both 2D STE and 3D STE were more sensitive to detect subtle myocardial changes in LV function compared with conventional indices.…”

“…However, this advantage is achieved at the expense of a lower volume rate, which might alter the correlations with measurements obtained by 2D STE. 33 …”

Three-dimensional myocardial strain estimation from volumetric ultrasound: Experimental validation in an animal model

“…Mean errors were 11.5%, -2.9% and -5.0% for RR , LL and CC respectively. These observations are consistent with a previous clinical study in which we compared the 3D segmental strain estimates against those obtained with 2D techniques (r=0.63 for LL , r=0.41 for CC and no significant correlation for RR ) [10]. Myronenko et al developed a comparable registration method, but they only reported sonomicrometry correlations for global twist and results for strain measurements were lumped for all directions [5].…”

3D Strain Assessment in Ultrasound (Straus): A Synthetic Comparison of Five Tracking Methodologies

“…Several studies compared 2D and 3D US wall motion [7], global deformation [8], [9] and strain values [10], [11]. These studies compared the consistency of results, the computation time and the number of segments analyzed by 2D and 3D speckle tracking.…”