[Assessment of left ventricular volume by contrast echocardiography]

Two-dimensional echocardiography for measuring left ventricular volumes usually gives volumes that are smaller than those determined with left ventriculography. This is due to less optimal image quality since manual tracing of endocardial borders requires still frames. Intravenous injection of echocontrast agent (Albunex) improve endocardial border recognition and therefore left ventricular volume measurements become more accurate. It is reported that contrast echocardiography significantly improves the correlation of echocardiographic left ventricular volume measurement with that of left ventriculography. From this points of view, contrast echocardiography is useful for the determination of left ventricular volumes in clinical settings.