Ventricular Function: How to Make the Gold Standard Shine-Ventricular Function: How to Make the Gold Standard Shine

Ventricular Function: How to Make the Gold Standard Shine

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The speaker discusses best practices for cardiac MRI volume analysis in congenital heart disease, emphasizing that formal recommendations are lacking and current methods are based on expert opinion. Key issues include whether to use short-axis or transverse/axial slices, how to handle trabeculations, and how to define the heart base. The speaker argues that axial/transverse imaging often improves visualization of the tricuspid valve and reduces intra- and interobserver variability, especially in complex right ventricles such as Tetralogy of Fallot, Ebstein anomaly, single ventricle, and post-atrial switch patients. They also stress careful ECG triggering, lead placement, and internal validation of volumes against flow to detect technical errors. For patients unable to breath-hold, free-breathing scans with more averages may be useful. Overall, the talk focuses on achieving more reliable, reproducible measurements of ventricular volumes and regurgitation in difficult congenital cases.

Keywords

cardiac MRI

congenital heart disease

ventricular volume analysis

axial transverse imaging

right ventricle

Tetralogy of Fallot