Feasibility of 64-MDCT in Evaluating Left Ventricular Diastolic Function

Objective: to evaluate the feasibility of 64-MDCT measurement of left ventricle diastolic function in refer to echocardiography. Materials and methods: 60 patients with suspected coronary diseases, underwent echocardiography and 64-MDCT during the same period. All participants' raw data of MDCT were reconstructed with an interval of 5% in 0-95% R-R interval, and images were transferred to AW4.4 workstation. The left ventricular function parameters such as early(E) and late(A) trans-mitral peak velocity, peak mitral septal tissue velocity(Ea), the estimation of LV filling pressure(E/Ea) were quantified with peculiar software. The CT-derived cardiac function parameters were analyzed and compared to that obtained from echocardiography. The randomly selected 20 cases as a subset were measured again by the same operator and another operator two weeks after their initial CT measurements. Results: Pearson correlation showed a good correlation for E(r = 0.82, P = 0.000), E/A(r = 0.91, P = 0.000), Ea(r = 0.82, P = 0.000), E/Ea(r = 0.83, P = 0.000). Bland-Altman plots for variability shows minimal bias between E, E/A, Ea, E/Ea. The Bland-Altman plots for intra- and inter-observer variability shows minimal bias between E/A and Ea measurements by CT. The corresponding coefficient were 0.91 and 0.89 for E/A(r = 0.91, P = 0.000; r = 0.89, P = 0.000), 0.87 and 0.84 for Ea(r = 0.87, P = 0.000; r = 0.84, P = 0.000). Conclusion: Retrospective ECG gated 64-MDCT coronary imaging, can be employed for quantitative evaluation of left ventricular diastolic function.