Distribution of left ventricular trabeculation across age and gender in 140 healthy Caucasian subjects on MR imaging.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to quantify the distribution of trabeculated (T) and compact (C) left ventricular (LV) myocardium masses in a healthy Caucasian population against age, gender and LV parameters, and to provide normal values for T, C and T/C. One hundred and forty healthy subjects were prospectively recruited and underwent cardiac MRI at 1.5T with a stack of short-axis cine sequences covering the entire LV. End-diastolic volume (EDV), C and T masses were quantified using a semi-automatic method. Ejection fraction (EF) and T/C ratio were computed. We included 70 men and 70 women with a mean age of 44±14 (SD) years (range: 20-69 years). The mean EF was 63.7±6.3 (SD) % (range: 50.7-82.0%), the mean EDV was 75.9±16.2 (SD) mL/m2 (range: 36.4-112.2mL/m2), the mean C mass was 53.9±11.2 (SD) g/m2 (range: 26.5-93.4g/m2) and the mean T mass was 4.9±2.4 (SD) g/m2 (range: 1.1-11.4g/m2). The T/C ratio was 9.2±4.5% (range: 2.0-29.4%). Multivariate ANOVA test showed that the compact mass was influenced by EDV (P<0.0001), EF (P=0.001) and gender (P<0.0001), and the trabeculated mass depended on EDV (P<0.0001), gender (P=0.002) and age (P<0.0001), while the T/C ratio was only influenced by age (P=0.0003). Spearman test showed a correlation between EDV and C (r=0.60; P<0.0001),T (r=0.46; P<0.0001) and T/C ratio (r=0.26; P=0.0023).T and T/C ratio correlated with EF (r=-0.18, P=0.0373; r=-0.18, P=0.0321, respectively). While the compact and trabeculated myocardium masses appear to relate separately to the cardiac function, age and gender, their ratio T/C appears to only decrease with age. Furthermore, we propose here normal values for T, C and T/C in a cohort of healthy Caucasians subjects.