Critical appraisal of left ventricular function assessment by the automated border detection method on echocardiography. Is it good enough?

Many studies have attempted to validate the echocardiographic automated border detection (ABD) method for assessing left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) by comparing it with various echocardiographic and non-echocardiographic standards. The main basis of assessing its accuracy has been the coefficient of correlation. The fallacy of using coefficient of correlation for assessing agreement between two methods of measurement has been well emphasized in the literature. In the present study we used the Bland and Altman test for testing the accuracy of the ABD method. We compared the ABD method for LVEF assessment with the manual edge detection technique on echocardiography and with radionuclide ventriculography in 34 patients. The majority of patients (76%) had regional wall motion abnormality. The ABD method could be adequately performed in 25 (74%) patients. LVEF was significantly underestimated by the ABD method with very wide limits of agreement when compared with radionuclide ventriculography and the manual edge detection technique (-9.2+/-21.7 and -2.7+/-18.4 respectively, mean error+/-2 standard deviations). Stated simply, the ABD method could overestimate LVEF by 12.5 and 15.7 or underestimate by 30.9 and 21.1 when compared with radionuclide ventriculography and manual edge detection technique, respectively. This large error is by no means acceptable for clinical purposes. It is concluded that at the present stage, the ABD method cannot replace radionuclide ventriculography and manual edge detection technique for assessing LVEF.