A study on measurement accuracy of mitral annulus by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography

Objective: To validate the accuracy of real-time three-dimensional echocardiography(RT-3DE) in measuring mitral annulus. Methods: Ten dogs' vivo hearts were imaged by RT-3DE. The mitral annulus were annotated and measured by TomTec 4D Cardio-View analysis software. The distance between two commissures of mitral annulus, middle perpendicular distance, distance between line from anterolateral commissure to posteromedial commissure of the mitral annulus and line from the top of anterior mitral annulus to the top of posterior mitral annulus and mitral annulus area were measured. Parameters derived by RT-3DE were compared with vitro heart measurements. Results: Parameters derived by RT-3DE were highly identical with the anatomic view. There were good correlation between RT-3DE measurements and anatomic view. The correlation coefficents were 0.885, 0.808, 0.834, 0.796 respectively(P0.05). Conclusion: For solid geometry of mitral annulus, RT-3DE can measure it accurately.