Contribution of Systolo-Diastolic Myocardial Video Intensity Variations to Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease

Contraction and relaxation of the heart causes decrease and increase in myocardial video intensity (MVI) recorded from echocardiographic iınages, respectively. Some studies suggest that this physiological cyclic variation of MVI diıninishes in ischemic conditions. The present study was planned to compare the cyclic variations of MVI recorded from patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and healthy subjects and to define its contribution to the diagnostic accuracy of dipyridamole stress echocardiography (DSE). DSE was performed to 34 patients with CAD (56±7 years) and 20 age matched controls (52±12- years). In all patients, the end-diastolic and endsystolic 20 echocardiographic images of 3 consecutive beats recorded on video tapes during peak stress and rest were digitized. The mean MVI values of end-systolic and end-diastolic frames of both ischeınic and non- ischemic segments during rest and peak exercise were obtained using a special software for analyzing medical images (Image Tool 2.0). The MVI index was defined as (end-diastolic MVI) - (end-systolic MVI)/ end-diastolic MVI x 100. In our study, the sens itivity, specific ity and diagnostic accuracy of DSE were 70%, 85% and 77.5% by us ing conventional wall motion seering method, respectively. During DSE, the mean and end- systolic MVI values of ischeınic segments were significantly increased when compared with non-is- chemic segments (mean: 48±8 - 40±6 ; pKeywords: Coronary artery disease, dipyridamole stress echocardiography, myocardial video intensity