Abstract 6115:Assessment of Circumferential and Longitudinal Strain using Speckle Tracking Echocardiography. Comparison With Tagged Cardiac Magnetic Resonance

Abstract

Background. Speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) is a new method that allows to quantitalively measure myocardial deformation in an angle-independent manner. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of STE-derived estimates of circumferential and longitudinal strains, in patients with variable degrees of LV dysfunction, using tagged cardiac magnetic resonance (cMR) as the reference standard. Methods. A total of 80 patients (66 men, mean age 54 ± 16 years) with a variety of cardiac diseases underwent STE and cMR on the same day. For circumferential strain, data were analyzed on matched short-axis cross-sections (at basal and apical levels) using either the QLab software (for STE) or HARP (for tagged cMR). For longitudinal strain, data were analyzed on similar 4-, 3- and 2-chamber views using either QLab (for STE) or a custom-made program that allows for tracking of cMR tags in long-axis projections (for tagged cMR). Results. 87% of myocardial segments could be analyzed. Correlation and limits of agreement between STE and cMR were good for both global (r = 0.95, p<0.001 and 1.2 ± 5.1%, respectively) and segmental circumferential strain (r=0.84, p<0.001 and 1.1 ± 9.9%, respectively, figure1 ). Correlation and limits of agreement between STE and cMR were similarly good for global (r =0.96, p<0.001 and −0.1 ± 3.0%, respectively) and segmental longitudinal strain (r = 0.77, p<0.001 and 0.2 ± 9.6%, respectively, figure1 ). Conclusions. STE provides accurate measurements of segmental circumferential and longitudinal strains and thus offers the opportunity to routinely assess these parameters in daily clinical practice.