Noninvasive evaluation of the left and right ventricular function using magnetic resonance

: MR imaging is one of the methods allowing the measurement of heart volumes. It provides oblique body sections along the cardiac axes according to cardiac anatomical planes and a spontaneous contrast between blood and myocardium. This study was aimed at evaluating the reliability of both ventricular volumes and ejection fraction measurement by applying the area-length method in patients with a normal left ventricle (group A, 13 patients), in patients with a dilated hypokinetic left ventricle (group B, 20 patients), in cases with segmental abnormalities of the kinesis of the left ventricle following myocardial infarction (group C, 15 patients) and in cases with pathologic involvement of the right ventricle alone for the calculation of the right ventricular ejection fraction (group D, 16 patients), as compared with ventriculography. Good correlations between MR ejection fraction and angiographic ejection fraction were observed in all groups (group A: r = 0.79, p less than 0.001; group B: r = 0.80, p less than 0.001; group C: r = 0.97, p less than 0.001; group D: r = 0.98, p less than 0.001). In the patients in groups A and D volumetric values were constantly underestimated, both telediastolic and telesystolic, due to both the partial volume effect and the cardiac rotation and translation during systole. MR imaging emerges as a reliable method which can easily be applied to the evaluation of left and right ventricular function even in routine examinations.