Current Advancement of Transthoracic 3D Echocardiography for the Quantification of Left Chamber Parameters

Abstract

It has passed more than 20 years, since the first-generation transthoracic real-time 3D echocardiography came appeared in the clinical arena in 1998. Although the earlier day’s transthoracic 3D echocardiography (3DTTE) had limitations mainly due to large footprint of 3D transducer, lower temporal and spatial resolution, making its routine clinical use quite difficult, several studies have reported its accuracy for the quantification of left chamber parameters over 2D echocardiography against cardiac magnetic resonance imaging as a reference. With continuous advancement of ultrasound technology, quality of 3DTTE image has been much improved, and now, one-beat acquisition of the whole heart with high volume rate is possible in many ultrasound manufactures. 3DTTE expands its acquisition in not only patients with sinus beat but also those with irregular heart beat and those who cannot stop breath adequately. Although each ultrasound company has their own quantification software for the analysis of left ventricular (LV) volumes, ejection fraction and mass, manual tracing on the endocardial border causes measurement variabilities in different examiners and different institutions. The adoption of recently developed fully automated LV and left atrial (LA) quantification software with 3DTTE might be one potential solution to eliminate this problem. I will present the current status of fully automated software with 3DTTE for the assessment of LV and LA volumes.