Abstract
We analyzed feature-tracking derived circumferential and longitudinal strain in healthy volunteers who underwent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) at 3.0 T. 88 healthy adults (44.6 ± 18.0 years old, 49% male), without prior cardiovascular disease, underwent CMR at 3.0 T including cine, and late gadolinium enhancement in subjects >45 years. LV functional analysis and feature-tracking strain analyses were carried out. Global strain had better reproducibility than segmental strain. There was a sex specific difference global longitudinal strain (mean ± SD, −18.48 ± 3.65% (male), −21.91 ± 3.01% (female), p < 0.001), but not global circumferential strain (mean ± SD, −25.41 ± 4.50% (male), −27.94 ± 3.48% (female), p = 0.643). There was no association of strain with ageing after accounting for sex for both global longitudinal and circumferential strain. Feature-tracking strain analysis is feasible at 3.0 T. Healthy female volunteers demonstrated higher magnitudes of global longitudinal strain when compared to male counterparts. Whilst global cine-strain has good reproducibility, segmental strain does not.
Highlights
One of the most important components of a clinical imaging study is the assessment of left ventricular (LV) pump function
Segmental longitudinal strain analyses had a higher bias than global strain analyses, with lower intra-class correlation co-efficient for both intra- and inter-observer analyses
We have investigated the feature-tracking derived circumferential and longitudinal strain in a large sample of healthy volunteers at 3.0 T utilizing commercially available feature-tracking software
Summary
One of the most important components of a clinical imaging study is the assessment of left ventricular (LV) pump function. The LVEF can be within normal reference ranges in a number of pathological states, which might otherwise have abnormal peak systolic strain values, i.e. identify sub-clinical LV dysfunction. Feature-tracking is a technique which has gained traction since being described by Hor et al, in 20114, and has resulted in the assessment of myocardial strain from routinely acquired cine imaging sequences in a myriad of pathologies[5,6,7,8,9,10]. Balanced steady state free precession imaging is more likely to experience artifact related to the high magnetic field[21] and feature-tracking reference ranges for healthy volunteers at 3.0 T are currently unavailable with clinically approved (for example, Food and Drug Administration approved) www.nature.com/scientificreports/. Health volunteer reference ranges are required to identify minor reductions in strain parameters when conventional parameters of function, such as the LV ejection fraction are unchanged[15,26,27]
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