Assessment of systolic left ventricular function: a multi-centre comparison of cineventriculography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, unenhanced and contrast-enhanced echocardiography

Aims To assess the agreement of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) determinations from unenhanced echocardiography, contrast-enhanced echocardiography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and cineventriculography as well as the inter-observer agreement for each method. Methods and results In 120 patients, with evenly distributed EF-groups (G 55, 35-55, L 35%), cineventriculography, unenhanced echocardiography with second harmonic imaging, and contrast echocardiography at tow mechanical index with iv administration of SonoVueR were performed. In addition, cardiac MRI at 1.5T using a steady-state free precession sequence was performed in a subset of 55 patients. On-site, and two blinded …