Left ventricular wall stress and thickness from 3D echocardiography in hypertensive patients

The authors applied a previously described method for 3D LV reconstruction from a limited number of long-axis 2D echocardiographic images to obtain epicardial and endocardial surfaces. By intersecting a regularly-spaced set of lines perpendicular to the center-surface with the endocardial and epicardial surfaces, LV local thickness was measured. Accuracy was improved by considering cubic spline patches rather than planar ones. LV volumes, mass and Janz´s stress index were computed. The goal of this work was to quantitatively evaluate the degree of LV hypertrophy, its spatial distribution in 21 patients with hypertension and to compare them to the standard M-mode mass values. Results indicate a good correlation between conventional echocardiographic and 3D estimated mass. Different patterns in the spatial distribution of myocardial hypertrophy were responsible for a scattering of data.