Side-by-side viewing of anatomically aligned left ventricular segments in three-dimensional stress echocardiography

Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) suffers from high interobserver and inter-institution variability in the diagnosis of myocardial ischemia. Therefore, we developed a three-dimensional (3D) analysis tool that makes it possible to anatomically align 3D rest and stress data systematically, to generate optimal, nonforeshortened standard anatomical cross sections and to analyse the images synchronized and side-by-side.

To investigate whether this 3D analysis tool could improve interobserver agreement on myocardial ischemia during 3D DSE.

The study comprised 34 consecutive patients with stable chest pain who underwent both noncontrast and contrast 3D DSE. Two observers scored segmental wall motion using a conventional analysis and the novel analysis with the new 3D tool.

The two observers agreed on the presence or absence of myocardial ischemia in 81 of 102 coronary territories (agreement 79%, kappa (kappa) 0.28) during noncontrast 3D imaging and 92 of 102 coronary territories (agreement 90%, kappa 0.65) during contrast-enhanced 3D imaging. With the new 3D analysis software these numbers improved to 98 of 102 coronary territories (agreement 96%, kappa 0.69) during noncontrast 3D imaging and 98 of 102 coronary territories (agreement 96%, kappa 0.82) during contrast-enhanced 3D imaging.

The use of a 3D DSE analysis tool improves interobserver agreement for myocardial ischemia both for noncontrast and contrast images.