Analysis of the quantitative improvements in resting echocardiographic image sharpness through the use of contrast enhanced echocardiography.

Contrast enhanced echocardiography (CEE) is a technique for the improvement of suboptimal echocardiographic studies. While commonly performed at selected institutions, its value has only been shown qualitatively, and to this point no study has been directed at establishing a quantitative improvement in image quality compared with non-contrast enhanced echocardiography (non-CEE). The purpose of this study was to quantitatively measure the effect of contrast on the quality of images obtained during non-CEE versus CEE. Thirty consecutive patients underwent CEE. In all subjects a non-CEE was obtained prior to administering any contrast, allowing for a direct comparison and an internal control group. Sharpness of the septal, apical and lateral myocardial walls in the apical 4-chamber view was calculated with and without contrast. Three signal intensity levels were obtained for each wall then averaged to compare the images with and without contrast for a statistically significant difference in sharpness. Quantitative analysis showed a significant difference in sharpness between CEE and non-CEE in the left ventricular septal myocardial wall, p < 0.01. A more drastic significant increase in image sharpness was observed between non-CEE and CEE in the apical and lateral left ventricular myocardial walls, both p < 0.000001. CEE significantly increases the sharpness at all left ventricular myocardial walls thus allowing higher quality images with presumably more accurate diagnosis of regional wall motion abnormalities, left ventricular endocardial border detection, left ventricular dimensions, ejection fraction and apical pathology.