Quality assurance of segmental strain values provided by commercial 2-D speckle tracking echocardiography using in silico models: a report from the EACVI-ASE Strain Standardization Task Force

• Autor(a) principal: Røsner, Assami
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Alessandrini, Martino, Kjønås, Didrik, Mirea, Oana, Queirós, Sandro Filipe Monteiro, D'hooge, Jan
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/76566
• topic: Reference Standards; Reproducibility of Results; Ventricular Function, Left; Echocardiography; Speckle tracking; In silico simulated model; 2-D strain imaging; Quality assessment; Different vendors; Science & Technology

The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy and reproducibility of vendor-specific regional strain values by echocardiography using in silico data. Synthetic 2-D ultrasound gray-scale images of the left ventricle (LV) were generated with knowledge of the longitudinal segmental strain values from the underlying electromechanical LV model. Four of five models mimicked transmural infarctions with systolic segmental stretching in different vascular areas. Cine loops in the three apical views were synthetically generated at four noise levels. All in silico images were repeatedly analyzed by a single investigator and some by another investigator. The absolute errors varied significantly between vendors from 3.3 ± 3.1% to 11.2 ± 5.9%. The area under the curve for the identification of segmental stretching ranged from 0.80 (confidence interval: 0.77-0.83) to 0.96 (0.95-0.98). The levels of agreement for intra-investigator variability varied between -3.0% to 2.9% and -5.2% to 4.8%, and for inter-investigator variability, between -3.6% to 3.5% and -14.5% to 8.5%. Segmental strain analysis allows the identification of areas with segmental stretching with good accuracy. However, single segmental peak-strain values are not accurate and should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, our results indicate the usefulness of semiquantitative strain assessment for the detection of regional dysfunction.