Assessment of D-shaped annulus of mitral valve in patients with severe MR using semi-automated 4-dimensional analysis: implications for transcatheter interventions

The development of transcatheter mitral valve replacement therapies requires accurate post-processing analysis tools to provide D-shaped mitral annulus dimensions from 3-dimensional (3D) data. The agreement between two semi-automated, software packages to process 3D transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) data for the measurement of the mitral valve annulus dimensions was evaluated. 3DTEE data of patients with moderate-severe mitral regurgitation (MR) were postprocessed with semi-automated, vendor-independent (VI) software and vendor-specific (VS) software. Both post-processing software provided key measurements for the selection of transcatheter valve prosthesis size: annulus area, annulus circumference and the septal-to-lateral distance of the annulus. The intertrigonal distance was provided only by the VS software. The inter- and intra-observer agreements were assessed with Bland-Altman analysis. Of 105 patients (63.8 +/- 11 years, 66% male) with MR, 28 had secondary MR, 45 fibroelastic deficiency, and 32 Barlow's disease. Using VS software, the dimensions for the overall population were 16.1 +/- 4.6 cm(2) for annulus area, for circumference 14.4 +/- 1.9 cm, intertrigonal distance 3.4 +/- 0.5 cm and septal-to-lateral distance 3.8 +/- 0.6 cm. Similar dimensions were obtained using VI software: 15.7 +/- 4.6 cm(2) for annulus area, 14.5 +/- 2.0 cm for circumference, and 4.1 +/- 0.6 cm for septal-to-lateral distance. The inter- and intra-observer agreement for both software programs was excellent. In conclusion, current post-processing software programs for 3DTEE data of the mitral valve annulus provide good reproducibility of key measurements to select the transcatheter prosthesis size.Cardiolog