Computer-based assessment of left ventricular wall stiffness in patients with ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy

Abstract

Ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM) is a degenerative disease of the myocardial tissue accompanied by left ventricular (LV) structural changes such as interstitial fibrosis. This can induce increased passive stiffness of the LV wall. However, quantification of LV passive wall stiffness in vivo is extremely difficult, particularly in ventricles with complex geometry. Therefore, we sought to (i) develop a computer-based assessment of LV passive wall stiffness from cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging in terms of a nominal stiffness index (E*); and (ii) investigate whether E* can offer an insight into cardiac mechanics in IDCM. CMR scans were performed in 5 normal subjects and 5 patients with IDCM. For each data sample, an in-house software was used to generate a 1-to-1 corresponding mesh pair of the LV from the ED and ES phases. The E* values are then computed as a function of local ventricular wall strain. We found that E* in the IDCM group (40.66 - 215.12) was at least one order of magnitude larger than the normal control group (1.00 - 6.14). In addition, the IDCM group revealed much higher inhomogeneity of E* values manifested by a greater spread of E* values throughout the LV. In conclusion, there is a substantial elevated ventricular stiffness index in IDCM. This would suggest that E* could be used as discriminator for early detection of disease state. The computational performance per data sample took approximately 25 seconds, which demonstrates its clinical potential as a real-time cardiac assessment tool. © 2013 SPIE.