Classification of left ventricular hypertrophies (LVH) based on discriminant analysis of time activity curve of equilibrium gated studies

The authors have previously shown that LVH can be separated from normals by using parameters which characterize the early filling period, but the number of cases approaching the borderline zone is still significant and no separation between etiologies of LVH was possible. The use of discriminant analysis (DA) of multiple parameters (PAR) characterizing the whole time activity curve (TAC) is tested. 13 normals (N), 53 LVH patients (P) with EF > 55%, subdivided in 3 subgroups (SG): 14 IHSS; 13 hypertension or aortic stenosis; 26 LVH of unknown etiology. The Wilk's lambda and Rao's V test indicate significantly better separation power for DA than for the best pair or single diastolic PAR previously used. The ''leave-one-out'' test (designed to evaluate the capability to correctly classify new cases) showed that for DA with 5 FTS only (S) decreased slightly. When the same procedure was applied to the best pair of old PAR, (S) and (Sp) decreased significantly. This indicates the advantage of DA. The 3-class DA was able to separate the 3 SG within LVH in 86, 100 and 77% of cases respectively. In conclusion DA of multiple TAC PAR enables not only excellent separation of LVH cases but also amore » very good separation of etiologic subgroups.« less