Background:Left ventricular function is particularly important to investigate since it has prognostic significance in some heart diseases such as aortic stenosis. One of the relatively new methods to evaluate this is deformation analysis that can produce a measure of global longitudinal strain with speckle-tracking. 

Objective:The objective was to examine the possibility of measuring left ventricular longitudinal function in patients with aortic stenosis from ECG-gated computed tomography images with the new software Segment CT and investigate prevalence of its reduction. Additionally, a second objective was to evaluate the feasibility of global longitudinal strain analysis from ECG-gated computed tomography in comparison with echocardiography and ejection fraction in a subset of patients. 

Material and methods:This study included 97 patients with severe aortic stenosis who underwent evaluation before planned treatment with transcatheter aortic valve implantation during 2016-2017 at Uppsala Hospital. Global strain was calculated from ECG-gated computed tomography and echocardiography with dedicated software.

Results:Left ventricular function measured by global strain was impaired in all patients while ejection fraction was decreased in 31 %. Mean global longitudinal strain by ECG-gated computed tomography was -6.46±3.51 % and by echocardiography -10.69±4.23 %. The mean difference between the methods was 4.23 %, which was statistically significant (p=0.02) while the correlation was good (r=0.74).

Conclusions:The strain analysis of ECG-gated computed tomography images was successful in less than a half of the patients. The results of the two methods showed good correlation but not agreement, further research is thus needed with a higher number of patients.