A New Approach to Assessing Regional and Global Myocardial Contractility

A number of studies that assessed myocardial contractility by noninvasive means have been conducted in the past. However, many of these studies are limited because they assessed the velocity of fiber shortening-afterload relationship at only a single location in the ventricle, thus assuming uniform contractility throughout the ventricle. This is often not the case, particularly in patients with coronary disease. The present study provides a new approach to assessing regional and global function that will be applicable to patients with nonuniform contractile function and makes use of entirely noninvasively obtained data. In addition, the method proposed will permit the question of linearity or nonlinearity of shortening rate-afterload relationship to be addressed in a more detailed, quantitative manner.